I keep it tucked in my wallet. It's a different sort of pink slip: a receipt from the Liberal Party of Canada dated Aug. 22, 2002. For the first time, I have aligned myself with a political organization. I have joined the Liberals, and for one purpose, and one purpose only: to vote against Paul Martin in any future leadership race.
Before I explain why, I would like to apologize to any Japanese friends and colleagues that I may have offended over the years. I spent five years in Japan, and I would often make holier-than-thou pronouncements about Japan's notoriously dysfunctional political system. It seemed as though the Japanese went through six or seven prime ministers in the time I was there -- though it may have been more; I lost track after a while.
Japan, you see, is governed by factions. Within the ruling party, personality cults jockey for position, deciding in closed-door deals whose turn it will be to rule this week. The voters are barely acknowledged, let alone consulted.
It is a jaded way to run a country, and for the longest time I was able to cluck disapprovingly, secure in the knowledge that no matter how flawed our system was back in Canada, it would never get as bad as Japan's.
Not any more. We have plunged headlong into our own version of Rule by Political Clique, thanks primarily to the efforts of Junior Martin, our aging Dauphin-in-Waiting.
This summer, Mr. Martin decided to stage a coup d'etat. That is, he set out to invalidate the Canadian electoral process, and for the most part, he succeeded. The media complied, rolling over with nary a whimper, and the coronation of Junior Martin is now presented as a foregone conclusion, one that needn't bother the pretty little heads of average Canadians.
Liberal Party insiders and great slathers of corporate cash have assured the outcome ahead of time, or so we are told. Not only is Junior set to become our (unelected) prime minister, but his backroom "ascendancy by faction" has been aided and abetted by any number of political pundits. Listen, Jean Chrétien sure as hell wasn't my choice for Prime Minister, but he did win a political mandate from the people of Canada, whether it was with 40 per cent of the popular vote or not. True, in Canada we don't choose our prime ministers directly. But anyone who tries to tell you that when Canadians cast their ballots they aren't also voting for who they want as prime minister is denying reality and common sense.
Mr. Chrétien wasn't "clinging to power," he was duly elected. Hell, he was only two years into his term. So let's be clear on this: Jean Chrétien had a legitimate claim to the office of prime minister. Paul Martin does not.
Nor are there gaping policy differences between Messieurs Martin and Chrétien; certainly nothing so drastic that it would justify overthrowing the head of our government. The only "crisis of leadership" was the loud ticking of Mr. Martin's biological clock and the whiff of an impending "best before date" creeping up.
But to hear the Martinites spin it, the leader of their faction was actually acting in the interests of the very democratic process that he sought to undermine. Paul was worried sick about "democratic deficiencies" in our current system, they assured us. Sort of like having a mugger warn you about street crime after he has rolled you in an alley.
Should MPs have more freedom in the House? Absolutely. Should the Office of the Prime Minister have less power? Undoubtedly. But what happened this summer had nothing whatsoever to do with principles and everything to do with the political ambitions of one man.
In Japan, I taught a business course about common English expressions, and one of the words that came up was weasel. "The word weasel," I explained, "can be used to describe someone who gets ahead, not through legitimate channels but through stealth, one who succeeds not by merit but with mirrors, not through strategy but subterfuge."
Later, while discussing yet another Japanese politician that had emerged from some smoke-filled room to take up the mantle of government, I asked one of my students, "How exactly did he end up as PM?" My student sighed and said, "He was the biggest weasel."
As this year's Summer of Cynicism unfolded, and as I watched Mr. Martin deny again and again any desire to undermine the integrity of the PMO, it hit me: "The man is a weasel." But not just any weasel. He is Weasely McWeasle, King Weasel of All the Weasels in Weasel Land. It's like a child's fable: the Story of the Grumpy Old Fox and the Hungry, Hungry Weasel. Or perhaps it's just a farce: the all-Canadian beer hall putsch of '02. Either way, now that Parliament has resumed, I will be doing my bit as a newly minted member of the Liberal Party to stop this slide into Government by Faction, starting with a pink slip of my own.
I once wrote a book that posited that there are only two types of leaders in Canada: Bastards and Boneheads. I think now I should have added a third category: El Weasel Supremo. Will Ferguson is the author of Bastards & Boneheads: Canada's Glorious Leaders Past and Present.