Crumpled Power Base

Well, then Toronto's smart and bumptious mayor Rob Ford is back in business. The democratic process that his sworn leftist enemies did their best to circumvent, still trying to prove to the majority of Torontonians that their voting choice was flawed, failed.  Not just once, but twice. And Mayor Ford's more immediate legal problems are over for now. Although his bitter adversaries do claim they intend to appeal the discharge of their allegations.

Talk about much ado over very little. It's a thing of desperation, assiduously searching out opportunities that just are not there. They'll have to wait for the next available ballot box, that time when the mayor has served out this term and goes on to run again on the winning kudos from his admirers for his next term. It's a bitter, hard-to-swallow pill for an assortment of good citizens posing as losers. Oops, losers posing as good citizens?

And Mayor Ford is now free to continue with his thus-far successful campaign to curb city spending while setting back decades of deterioration in the city's administrative and infrastructure fortunes. And while he's at it he will speak his mind, sometimes clumsily, and in so doing increasing his popularity for those who enjoy his plain and often plaintive, but never boring language of intention and procedure.

He'll also be able to resume his charitable work in the sphere of helping to provide sport activities for kids whose own resources and backgrounds are somewhat lacking in opportunity. This time around, doubtless, with a little more care to sign as Rob Ford, not Mayor Ford for those whose portable ethics he scandalized last time around.

Voting in city council on a matter dear to his heart, revolving around a veritable pittance may not have boosted his honours but it was Rob Ford. Who still cannot seem to understand why that miscarriage of the letter of the law infuriated so many. Well, at least those who seized upon that little misadventure to triumphantly yell "gotcha" only to find they hadn't.

Sanity and proportionality prevailed, as it occasionally does. An Ontario Divisional Court tossed the case in an unanimous three-judge appeal ruling: "council did not have the jurisdiction to impose such a penalty" (repayment of the $3,150 by Mr. Ford himself as a penalty imposed under the city's Code of Conduct). It was outside and beyond the legal power of council. Null, voided.

A humbled (hah, as if!) Mayor Ford is grateful for the emphatic support he received throughout this unfortunate debacle. Clayton Ruby take note, forget going to the Supreme Court, they'll only hand it right back.