Irritating Inconveniences of Power

Governments have the problems. They all do, even brutish autocracies like Russia, although Vladimir Putin is skilled in the skulduggery allowed him by a virtual one-party system, to hit back hard against any opponents who still believe that Russia had absorbed any lessons in democratic action; Mr. Putin simply imprisons them and puts them out of contention. It is a vast improvement over assassinating them, which he has also been implicated in, by association, if not through hard-and-fast evidence.

And then there is Britain with its coalition government which seemed to be working all right, but has taken on discordant notes of late. Immigration has become a bit of a problem, particularly now with the country's economic downturn that isn't coming out of its dive as speedily as some would like. Employment migrants from less-fortunate members of the EU have become a spur to voter discontent.

And coincidentally the Conservative Party of which Mr. Cameron is head, and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in a minority government given governing status by its association with the Liberal Democrats whose values do not always run alongside that of the Conservatives, lost 335 council seats in local elections recently held, while the Liberal Democrats lost another 124 seats. 

While the UK Independence Party (UKIP), derided by the Conservatives as a party of "loonies, fruitcakes and closet racists", won 139 seats with fewer than 23% of the popular vote; 2% less than the Conservatives in the last election. Suddenly the UKIP has become respectable, and the Conservatives are anxious to inform UKIP supporting voters that their views matter, after all. The government is willing to listen to their concerns.

And then, in another country's pained !oops!, there is France's socialist president François Hollande who has had to confront a series of problems on multiple fronts, as France slid effortlessly back into recession. President Hollande must now convince France's voters he can solve the angry mood in the country. That the "worst is over" and his reforms are on track to bring the economy back to health despite entering a double-dip recession.

Employment in the country is at an all-time high of 3.2-million people. GDP contracted 0.2%, following on the last quarter of 2012 when it was the same, forcing President Hollande to admit that growth would probably be "nil" in 2013. And France is mired in military action against Islamists in Mali, a foreign intervention that seemed a good move at the time, but does sap the economy. A document has been produced portraying Mr. Hollande as isolated and powerless. France is not pleased.

Now then, in the United States, the unflappable Barack Obama is facing a triple-whammy; revelations of State Department machinations over the Benghazi terrorist attack that killed four Americans and which both Republicans and Democrats have been hammering the administration over in its ineptitude and failure to disclose. Then there is the AP phone affair where government broke its trust with the press, anxious to control the flow of information by government leaks.

Top that off with the IRS institutionalizing a political agenda focusing on Republicans. With the Internal Revenue Service instituting a special scheme for withholding charitable status for groups using key words such as "patriot", or "tea party" nomenclatures to describe their purpose. Employees in the IRS had evidently been cautioned to carefully scrutinize requests from 'conservative' groups for special withholding treatment. President Obama was outraged; not his agenda they were following.

And then there is Canada. Our Prime Minister Harper, a principled man of great integrity and sense of responsibility is now being impugned by an affair of truly regrettable proportions. Three of the many senators whom he had appointed to the Senate of Canada have demonstrated their penchants for milking the public purse under false and unethical pretenses, bringing shame on both the Senate, their colleagues within it under the Conservative umbrella, and shock to the governing Conservatives.

In the process, it seems obvious that favouritism was displayed when Mike Duffy was singled out for special treatment; not necessarily at Prime Minister Harper's command, but in view of the esteem in which he was held, as an outstanding and committed fundraiser for the Conservative brand, by those serving in the PMO, and most particularly by the Prime Minister's Chief of Staff, Nigel Wright. A man whose own principles are cited as beyond reproach.

Yet he was somehow prevailed upon to commit to surrendering $90,000 of his personal wealth, gratis, to rescue Senator Duffy from being unable to pay back the funds he had 'erroneously' claimed as due him for an entitled housing supplement, having claimed a cottage on PEI as his principal residence, despite having owned a home and living in Ottawa for decades. 

Mr. Harper has not yet responded personally to his loss of three senators and one vital chief of staff.

He must come to the realization that the optics are rather fuzzy on this one, and there is a certain odour emanating from the direction of the PMO connecting directly to Senator Duffy. Both of which require his attention on a rather immediate basis, despite an emergency meeting with his caucus scheduled for Tuesday and his flight out of country on a foreign mission immediately following.