Monday, January 30, 2012

The Ignominious End of Gilles Duceppe

A PICTURE TO REMEMBER!
Witnessing the sudden collapse and downfall of the political career of Gilles Duceppe, I must admit to a raging case of schadenfreude.
No politician deserves such an ignominious fall from grace more than the duplicitous, back-stabbing opportunist that defines the persona of Gilles Duceppe.

As you can imagine, I'm no fan, not so much for his separatist politics, but rather for his proclivity to bite the hand that feeds him.
We Canadians have paid his Parliamentary salary for over  twenty years and now are obliged to pay his 140k pension until God knows when, during which time, he has and will continue to tell the world that we Canadians are exploiters and colonialists. 

The ethics scandal that has brought him down is particularly satisfying because it was Gilles Duceppe and the Bloc Quebecois that presented himself and itself as more Cathoic than the Pope.
Two elections ago, the Bloc campaigned on the platform of honesty and integrity and so there's a sense that Duceppe is receiving his just desert.
Like a pious televangelist who is ruined when caught cheating and whoring, it sets the world right, for a moment, anyways.

My favorite comment on the affair by a Le Devoir reader;
 "Duceppe l’arroseur arrosé, Youppi"  (Duceppe the sprinkler, sprinkled)

Unethical or illegal, Duceppe displayed the shady behavior of a disgruntled employee who steals from the company where he works, while continuing to cash a cheque.

Whether guilty or innocent of using public funds for partisan political ends, it doesn't really matter.
Despite a spirited defense put on for him by Le Devoir and assorted hardliners, wherein they claimed that he technically violated no rules, the public has already made up its mind......Guilty.

Mr. Duceppe didn't exactly help his cause, his actions after the revelations were made, were those of a guilty man.

I am reminded of a story told to me a while back when I participated in a golf tournament put on by the Montreal police.  A senior Montreal detective regaled our table at the 19th hole with a story about the down and dirty investigative methods employed by cops.
In this particular case two suspects were picked up for a crime that only one committed. They were both placed in jail overnight having been told they'd be charged in the morning.
Overnight the cops observed their behavior.
The first suspect was agitated and angry, demanding a lawyer and telling all who would listen that he was innocent.
The second suspect remained calm, asked warders for a cigarette and turned in early, sleeping quite well.
In the morning the detective let the agitated suspect go and charged the other.
You see, as my detective friend explained, the behavior exhibited by the men, clearly indicated that one was innocent, the other guilty.
The first, furious that he was being charged with a crime he did not commit, the second resigned to the fact that he was caught.

Who did Gilles Duceppe closely emulate, the guilty suspect or the innocent?

There are politicians around the world charged with crimes or accused of various misdeeds who almost universally fight the charges tooth and nail while remaining in office. It's par for the course.
Silvio Berlusconi spent his whole political career under an ethics cloud and never wavered. a good chunk of the Israeli cabinet is under scrutiny for either ethics violations or outright criminality. American senators and congressmen are regularly subject to impeachment through a process that takes years to play out.
Who resigns? Practically nobody.

Mr Duceppe cut and run, hoping that if he left the political scene, perhaps he would be left alone.

Had he come out and raged against the allegations against him, labeling the charges as partisan attacks, I'm sure that he could have withstood the attack, but Duceppe is a chocoladnicky, a Russian expression for someone apt to melt under the heat.

Now there are those who say that Duceppe used the ethics investigation as a convenient device to extricate himself from a sticky situation where his attempted coup against Pauline Marois failed.

I find it a little hard to believe, but no matter.

His attempt to take over the leadership was a half-assed effort that was so badly planned and executed that I seriously question his skills as a politician.

Once he embarked on his betrayal of Marois and she got wind of it, she put the mutiny down in short order.
The incredible thing about it all, is that if he had done nothing and remained on the sidelines as a 'loyal' separatist, Marois would have collapsed under her own weight and the leadership would have come to him without lifting a finger!

All this has led me to conclude that Duceppe was no brainiac, but rather an opportunist who talked up a storm but was always out manoeuvred by the Prime Minister of the day or Pauline Marois back home. Readers will remember that this is the second time she beat back an attempt by Duceppe to take over the PQ.

Over the twenty odd years in Ottawa, the Bloc led by Duceppe brought Quebec not an iota of benefit, in fact, its very presence insured the opposite. 
In asking Quebecers to support a party riding the pine of ignominy, in the opposition benches of Parliament, the Bloc robbed Quebecers of representation in cabinet and the halls of power, a frightful price to pay for the luxury of thumbing ones nose at the hated Anglos in the RoC.

I'm glad that Gilles Duceppe is going out a disgraced loser, because that was what he was his whole career, a disgrace who cost Quebec influence and power, a humiliating presence in Ottawa that rendered Quebec impotent and irrelevant.

His phony Don Quixotesque act, tilting at federalist windmills has crippled this province incalculably.

As he exits the stage a disgraced and beaten man, it remains a bittersweet victory for federalists.

After all, we will have the pleasure of paying him a handsome pension for the rest of his natural life.

The idea of Gilles Duceppe in retirement, sipping margaritas in Aruba, on our dime, while lobbing the occasional separatist bomb at we evil Canadians, remains a bitter pill to swallow.

Good riddance to bad rubbish!

35 comments:

  1. I'm glad we got rid of him. Let's hope Marois is next.

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  2. We need marois around for the Quebec provincial election coming up. As long as she is around, the least worst choice for allos and anglos the Quebec liberals might win in the 3 way race. That francois legault party is just as pro bill 101 as the PQ.

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    1. Everyday Marios remains leader of the PQ means everyday she'll bring us closer to the day the PQ will implode. As for the CAQ. They'll also fizzle out just like the federal NDP seems to be fizzling out.

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    2. Jamaica Darling says: you may think it's odd what I am about to say, but I don't have the feeling the CAQ are going to go as hardcore as the PQ has in past on enforcing Bill 101, if ever they end up being elected though. I mean, c'mon let's face it, we can't deny the fact that Legault seems a whole lot less stupid and irrational than Marois appears to be and the fact that he left the PQ, actually leads me to believe that he doesn't want to be putted in the same basket as the PQ... But eh, that's just my opinion.

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    3. "...But eh, that's just my opinion."

      Effectivement,vous avez toutes les raisons de douter de votre affirmation.Un fédéraliste peut devenir souverainiste mais l'inverse est plutôt improbable.

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    4. PAULINE LA PAS FINE SAYS: and what about you???should you not question your own arguments, since they always end up getting refuted.

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    5. > Un fédéraliste peut devenir souverainiste mais l'inverse est plutôt improbable.

      Est-ce pour ça qu'il faille recourir au droit de vote à 16 ans et que Pauline en soit d'accord seulement après un bon lavage de cerveau? :

      " [...] moi, je me sens confortable avec le fait qu'il y a dans la proposition non seulement le vote à 16 ans, mais on a ajouté qu'on devait appliquer cela une fois qu'on avait renforcé l'enseignement de l'histoire nationale et qu'on aurait implanté un cours d'éducation à la citoyenneté pour que, évidemment, les jeunes soient informés de nos institutions, de NOS institutions (sic), qu'est-ce que c'est un parlement, qu'est-ce que c'est le rôle d'un premier ministre, qu'est-ce que c'est un état, etc. Nos jeunes conduisent à 16 ans, nos jeunes peuvent travailler, payer des impôts..."

      Faire connaitre aux jeunes les structures qui nous régissent, c'est beau. Injecter à cette connaissance un endoctrinement indépendantiste plutôt que de présenter objectivement toutes les facettes de notre histoire et de notre politique, ça ne revient qu'à faire du forage de votes chez des jeunes toujours en plein développement intellectuel.

      Si un séparatiste ne pouvait pas devenir fédéraliste, les péquistes ne s'abaisseraient pas au point d'adopter une telle mesure. Pathétique, comment qu'ils cherchent à créer des "conditions gagnantes". Rappelons que ce sont aussi les jeunes d'Iran qui militaient en faveur de l'Ayatollah en 1979 et dont la plupart regrettent très amèrement aujourd'hui cet appui...

      Après 50 ans, l'idée n'est toujours pas vendeuse; il faut simplement discontinuer le produit séparatiste.

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    6. Désolé Apparatchik,c'est un "Work in progress" qu'il nous est impossible d'abandonner.Trop de chemin parcouru jusqu'à maintenant,impossible de revenir sur nos pas.Les seppies sont anti-régression.

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    7. "Pauline, la pas fine"!!! Heheh... she's like the Engergizer bunny no matter how often she gets refuted. Let's hope she manages to stick around until the next election.

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  3. If the allegations against him hold water and he is charged with misuse of public funds for partisan politics he'll have to repay some or all of it back. At least we'll get some of that pension money back.

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  4. Just a question: If Duceppe is found in violation of House Ethics rules, what sort of consequences is he looking at? Does anyone here have a realistic assessment of what might happen?

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    1. Worst case scenario- He will have to pay back the money. (close to a million)
      There is no 'criminal' element in any of this.
      It's like getting items on your expenses report rejected by the accounting department.

      It is more a question of dishonor.

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    2. Thank you for that honest reply. I was hoping that the House of Commons Board of Internal Economy would have had some tangible means of penalizing members who abused of their status both as elected officials and as spenders of the taxpayers dime. But alas, my hopes of seeing this insipid man's overly generous pension become retroactively terminated for such dishonorable conduct was just my own wishful thinking...

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  5. Are you sure those cops weren't just paraphrasing Keyser Söze?

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    Replies
    1. Heh, good call, and great movie.

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    2. Keyser Söze, heheh... so true, and great movie!

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  6. I so doubt Duseppie is going to face any charges whatsoever, and he'll collect the pension he truly doesn't deserve until his dying day. Like Adolf Hitler, this toilet of a man got elected legally several times and so he WILL get his pension until his dying day, as will Lucien Bouchard, Marcel Masse and a host of other separatists. Politics is a license to steal! Case closed.

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    1. In most other countries, he'd be in prison for treason. In Canada, we give him a pension for life.

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    2. Correct, Diogenes! The whole seppie movement should have been put on trial and prison for treason, maybe executed (although this year marks 50 years since Canada hung its last dog). With PET and his lieutenants at the helm, though, this would never have happened). Lieutenants like Marc Lalonde, Jean Chrétien, Jean-Luc Pépin, Jean Marchand (the lush that he was) amongst others certainly weren't going to rock the boat!

      Is the States doing better? Right now the Republicans have to decide if their presidential candidate is going to be a philanderer or a tax evader. In his role of D.A. Arthur Branch on Law and Order SVU, Senator Fred Dalton Thompson once stated at the end of an episode where a congressman's aide took the wrap for his boss's crime "Democracy is the worst form of government...........except for all the rest)." You can't win!

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  7. "In most other countries"...On assassine nos enfants pour crime d'honneur.

    Dans quelle époque vivez-vous "indigène"?

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    Replies
    1. You're a troll, obviously. One does not compare with the other!

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    2. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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    3. Congrats, troll! You proved my point!

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  8. Hey adski, I didn't know they had free wireless at occupy Montreal. Pass the bong dude. Good job comparing politically motivated (read $$$$$) actions to murdering your own children.

    What's next? A parking offence is the equivalent to molesting a child?

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    1. You're in a wrong thread dude. It seems more fitting for you to lay off the bong, not ask for more.

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  9. Jamaica Darling says: Gilles really needs to be put in his place and pay the price for taking advantage of canadian taxpayers...instead of biting the hand that fed him throughout the years he was an MP, he should be thanking us for living up to his wallet and bank account expectations and requirements.

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  10. Just another crooked and dishonest politician from Quebec. The latest revelations come as no surpise to me. Unfortunate that we have to pay him an indexed pension for the rest of his life.

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  11. The gig is up and he is laughing at all of us folks, This seppie clown, this typical anti-English language bigot from Kebec spent 20 years foaming at the mouth, lying, cheating like so many politicians before him, and for what? Well how about a great big fat pension yearly.

    He may be gone, but he is a pretty wealthy man, a sweet deal from Canada. What a great scam politics is. So many of the same scum bags all over Ottawa, just waiting to cash in…what an expensive joke.

    Yes you see folks, this is why these scum bags are always smiling for the camera. The joke is on us as they laugh all the way to the bank.

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  12. That new font is killing my eyes ...

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  13. Danke, German friends for inventing the word "schadenfreude"... the perfect word for describing things like the delightful infighting between the seppies... Grüße aus Kanada!

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    1. Pauline La Pas Fine is asking: the actual English word for "schadenfreude" is Shadow freak, isn't it??

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    2. No, not really... literally, it is "Adversity-Joy".

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