|
Monday June 6, 2005 |
BACK |
NEXT
MURPHY'S GOT TO GO
by Angelo Persichilli
THE HILL TIMES
(Versione italiana)
The basic role of
any chief of staff is to protect the political boss. When this is not
possible, for whatever reason, and, in fact, the tables are turned and it’s
the boss who has to defend the chief of staff, then it’s obvious that the
latter has to go.
Tim
Murphy, chief of staff to the Prime Minister of Canada, cannot defend his
boss any longer.
In
saying this, I’m not passing any political or moral judgments on the role
played by Mr. Murphy in the Gurmant Grewal case; I’m just saying this is the
rule of thumb for all political operatives.
Say a
person is hired to drive a Formula One car and is injured in an accident.
That person cannot drive the car; regardless of who’s to blame.
The debate over who’s responsible for the accident will only
help to understand if the individual was a good or a bad driver;
and, with all due respect to Mr. Murphy, and considering the
important issues Canada and the world are facing, I believe we all should
spend our time more wisely. Putting aside the personalities involved, the
political events of the last few weeks confirm the moral degradation of the
Canadian political system.
Basically, Mr. Grewal has accused Mr. Murphy of offering appointments to
himself and his wife, Conservative MP Nina Grewal, in exchange for their
votes. Mr. Murphy, on the other hand, has accused the Conservatives of
trying to sell their loyalty in exchange for appointments.
One of
the two is lying, and one is telling the truth.
The one
telling the truth is the one tells Canadians that we have corrupted
politicians in Ottawa.
Spending
time to find out who started the conversation is a phony side issue. The
real problem is that several meetings took place: however you slice it, and
is disgraceful.
Let’s
pretend, for a moment, that Mr. Murphy was right in saying that it was Mr.
Grewal who approached the Liberals, making a proposal asking for a position
in exchange for he and his wife’s votes. Mr. Murphy could have dealt with
the issue very easily by saying "No." End of the story.
Can Mr.
Murphy explain why he took several days and hours of conversation to
pronounce the monosyllabic answer? Oh, yes, he explains it: "I think we are
looking [to] find a way for future truth," he says somewhere in one of the
tapes.
I don’t
understand what he means; I assume that for the Liberals the truth is
connected to the House of Commons calendar.
Let’s
see: there’s one truth when you give away the sponsorship contract and
another when you talk to Judge Gomery? Why do they want us to believe now
that they are not interested in those kind of deals? What is the difference
between the deal that brought Belinda Stronach from the Conservative caucus
into the government and the one denounced by Mr.
Grewal? Why do we read stories in the media hailing Mr. Murphy as
the saviour of the government bringing Ms. Stronach in the Liberal caucus,
and now they look at the latest story as the Canadian Watergate? Is it that
in the new Canadian political system the morality of an action is measured
with the stick of success? Had Mr. Murphy said yes to the alleged requests
from Mr. Grewal, would we be now talking about another Canadian hero? The
sad part of this story is that all of us, including the media, have lost the
compass telling us where morality is. We have lost our capacity to discern
between villains and heroes, honesty and dishonesty, intelligence and
canning behaviour, courage and opportunism.
We know
that government positions are forfeited to keep some caucus members quiet,
we know that there are Conservative MPs joining the Liberals in exchange for
government positions, and we know that the government is willing to "buy"
votes giving away government positions. We all know that.
What did
we do to denounce it? Nothing.
Why are
we now all up in the arms talking about the sour deal between Tim Murphy and
Gurmant Grewal? In an honest, healthy and democratic system, the life of a
minority government depends on the skills of the leaders of the House of all
parties involved in the process. If the Liberal minority government has been
able to survive the crucial confidence vote, a considerable part of the
merit has to go to two people: Tony Valeri and Libby Davies, respectively,
the House leaders for the Liberal Party and the NDP. If the system works
they should be credited, if the system doesn’t work, it is the role of the
media to denounce the lack of democracy.
Well, we
did neither: we did not recognize Davies and Valeri’s role and we did not
denounce a system where positions have been mutilated, responsibility
hijacked in the backroom and democracy violated.
Mr.
Murphy I believe has to go, but I also believe that he is not the cause of
the problems in Ottawa; he, himself is a victim of Paul Martin’s failed
campaign to reduce the lack of democratic deficit in the Parliament. |
