Mr. and Mrs. Huronia .. have Liberals found their ticket .. apparently not?
Apr 22nd, 2010 | By Citizen X | Category: In Brief
Former Conservative MP Rahim Jaffer waits to testify before the government operations committee in Ottawa, April 21. Photograph by: Chris Wattie, Reuters.
OTTAWA. APRIL 22, 2010. Rahim Jaffer, loving husband of former Conservative junior cabinet minister (and Miss Huronia) Helena Guergis, appeared before the government operations committee of the Canadian House of Commons yesterday. The early reviews are in, and they are not good. See, eg, Don Martin, poet laureate of Stephen Harper’s Ottawa (well, sort of: he does retain a sometimes remarkable objectivity): “Jaffer denials can’t salvage his reputation.”
The excellent John Ibbitson, onetime poet laureate of Mike Harris’s Queen’s Park (whose old political base in Ontario Mr. Harper has inherited, thanks to the likes of Mr. Flaherty, Mr. Baird, and Mr. Clement) has captured the essential pathos of the story in “Rahim Jaffer shunned and humiliated.” As Mr. Ibbitson explains: “Mr. Jaffer … appears stunned by the ferocity with which the Conservatives have ostracized him and his wife … But the fact is, the couple aren’t part of the Conservative Party any more.” Even so: “The sad truth is that Mr. Jaffer might not have done much of anything seriously wrong.”
For my own earlier views on this yet another low-minded Ottawa political scandal CLICK HERE (or just scroll down below, depending on how you have arrived at this posting in the first place). It would still seem rash to try writing any very last chapter to the story so soon. But for the time being the answer to my earlier question –Â have Canadian Liberals found their ticket (at last)? – is apparently no. See, eg, Ms Jane Taber on “With Guergis behind them, Tories climb back.”
In fact, when you go directly to the weekly EKOS poll on which Ms. Taber’s article is based, “Tories climb back” seems an exaggeration at best. Last week they had some 31.4% of the EKOS sample. This week they have risen to 31.7%. What does appear clearer is the Ignatieff Liberals’ inability to keep profiting from the ongoing Guergis-Jaffer saga. Last week they had managed to climb to 29.0%. This week they are back down to their 27.1% core support. Who has profited most from “Guergisization,” based on this week’s EKOS poll? It isn’t the NDP. It’s the Bloc Quebecois – and especially the Green Party. And across the land the Greens are currently strongest in Ottawa and Calgary, Alberta! So … go figure. Who said this isn’t a wild and crazy country, anyway?
