Marc Bellemare Starting to look Unbalanced

A few days ago Marc Bellemare gave an interview on a French language all-news station telling all who would listen that he has no intention of testifying before the Bastarache Commission, looking into his express allegations that Premier Charest and the Liberal party exercised undo influence on the selection of judges while he was justice minister. Mr. Bellemare also stated that he would fight any subpoena, based on his opinion that the Commission is biased, a position that legal experts agree is un-winnable.

I've spoken to Liberal insiders, at the very highest levels who have told me that in no uncertain terms that Bellemare is off his rocker.
His allegations stunned the party and the Premier in particular who swears that the two left on good terms. That's their story.

But what prompted his outburst years later remains a mystery. Nobody, and Bellemare in particular has explained it.

When Bellemare first made his allegations the press embraced the story with open arms, after all, it was good press and fit in nicely with the ongoing controversy over ethics in the Premier's office.

But after the initial hoopla, certain members of the press did  what they do best, investigate the veracity of what was being presented as fact.

Jeam Lapierre, one of Quebec's finest political analysts (he was a member of Paul Martins's cabinet, before quitting) was visibly perturbed with Bellemare's lack of forthrightness. He offered an on-air opinion that it was high time for the ex-justice minister to 'put up or shut up.'

Lapierre also took exception to the blistering attack that Bellemare made on Justice Michel Bastarache who is heading the commission. 

"I don't have confidence that Mr. Bastarache has the impartiality or the intellectual and moral liberty to go so far as to say that Mr. Charest lied, and if he doesn't have that capacity, in my opinion he is not impartial,"
"If commissioner Bastarache says that Jean Charest lied, that means what? It means the end of the government, the end of Jean Charest's career. Do you think Mr. Bastarache has that intellectual liberty?" - Marc Bellemare

Bellemare then cast more aspirations on the commission head by pointing out that he is a member of a law firm closely linked to the government.

Not even the Parti Quebecois would dare go so far as to call an ex-Supreme Court Justice unfit and it is looking more and more that Bellemare is getting cold feet.

Given the aggressiveness that Premier Charest is going after Bellemare, it seems that the Premier is absolutely convinced that Bellemare is either lying or unable to prove his allegations.

Mr. Bellemare is starting to look familiarly like Myriam Bédard, the ex-Olympian that rocked the political world with her allegations that she was fired from her VIA Rail job because she raised objections concerning the corporation's dealings with a firm involved in the Sponsorship scandal. She became quite a personality and testified before Parliament making all sorts of allegations. The reaction from the brass at VIA rail was to depict her in various unflattering terms, an unwise decision which led to the sacking of then President of the crown corporation, Jean Pelletier.

But months later it became quite evident that Ms. Bédard had several screws loose, as she continued to make statements that were bizarre, to say the least.

"...she claimed that she had been told that Groupaction was involved in drug trafficking, that her partner Nima Mazhari had personally convinced Prime Minister Chrétien to keep Canada out of the war in Iraq, and that Québécois race car legend Jacques Villeneuve had been paid $12 million to wear a Canadian flag on his uniform." Wikipedia

In 2007, she was found  guilty of child abduction (for violation of a child custody agreement) when she took her child  to Washington DC, without permission, where she was arrested by U.S Marshalls.
 
Her common law husband Nima Mazhari was also convicted in 2007 of fraud. A Quebec City judge described him as a "liar" and a "manipulator," and sent him to jail for six months for bilking an elderly artist out of $100,000 in paintings.

Jean Pelletier later sued the government for wrongful dismissal in relation to his firing in the Bédard affair and won a $400,000 settlement.

We may just be witnessing another saga of similar proportions.

Who knows?
But a lot of people are starting to wonder about the sanity of Marc Bellemare.