Is this the last we'll hear of Mulroney? Don't bet on it

Any shred of credibility Brian Mulroney had left went out the window yesterday with the release of the final report from Judge Jeffrey Oliphant.   Namely, Mulroney broke his own ethics guidelines when he took at least $225,000 in $1000 bills from an arms dealer -- Karlheinz Schreiber, the said dealer and now doing eight years in a German jail for tax evasion, insists it was $300,000 -- but the worst part of it all is that Judge Oliphant had to admit there are no controls currently in place that would prevent a similar incident from occurring in the future.    And we know the hot water at least two of Mulroney's successors got into afterwards.

I'll leave it to others to decide if Mulroney committed something more than what he called a lapse in  judgment.   But it only leads to more cynicism about the whole system and lower voter participation -- except by those driven to vote, which as it turns out is the current power base that Mulroney fought so hard against during his time in office.  Remember, he was a Progressive Conservative and supported the welfare state that the religious right wants so much to dismantle.

I happen to  think  that if we had proportional representation, there might have been more checks in place to ensure that any MP and certainly a current or former Prime Minister would not have been able to do something like this.   And even that aside, let's get real.   If you were offered an envelope of M notes, wouldn't you ask questions?   Was Mulroney's affairs so out of whack that he had to get himself into this mess?   It's sad in a way -- likeable fellow, kind of guy you'd want to share a drink with (even though he doesn't drink) but this is the kind of thing you'd expect in a third world country.

Not a "clean" country like CA-NA-DA.

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