Don't...patronize me?

Unfortunately, Canadians have been swept away by both shallow media hype and their own disgust. The fact remains that at the deeper political level, all the Gomery inquiry is revealing is the tried and true patronage system that has always dominated Canadian politics.

Canadians only rarely get a clear glimpse of the sleazy patronage system. But virtually all the Gomery testimony-- except that clearly revealiing criminal wrongdoing-- describes in sordid detail how patronage works. When a party wins power, it rewards its friends and punishes its enemies....

Here is where Martin deserves some credit. He broke the rules. He broke ranks with how politics has always been done. Aginst the advice of the old guard in the Liberal party, he convened a judicial inquiry. He could have stonewalled, limited the investigations to those who engaged in criminal activity and sent a few sacrificial lambs to prison. He could have kept the lid on it. It was Chretien's mess and Martin was already punished during the last election. It would have gone away as the public grew tired of the carping from the opposition parties.

But Martin insisted on opening Pandora's box and it looks like he might be the first to pay the price for lifting that forbidden lid.

Perhaps he deserves it. But then so does every past and present prime minister and premier who embraces the patronage system.

--from the article Unruly Alliance by John Conway, in the new Planet S