Never-ending Wrongdoings of Apparently Honest Governments
Ali Mokhtari
We have heard interesting news about corruption in different levels of the Canadian government. Some time ago, the mass media made a big deal about the covert relationship between Mafia and the municipal authorities in several cities of Quebec. A special committee was established in order to investigate the dimensions of the corruption. The mayors of a number of Quebec cities, including the mayor of the big city of Laval to the north of Montreal, were arrested and the mayor of Montreal resigned, his temporary substitute being assigned by the city council until the next elections. Now he is also in prison. In November, the people of Montreal went to the polls and expressed their dissatisfaction with the former mayor and his colleagues.
In 2006, the Conservative Party of Canada, led by Stephen Harper, started a campaign against corruption, claiming that there is corruption in the Liberal Party. It also claimed that it would form the most transparent government of Canada. People could not trust the Conservative Party, although they had lost their confidence in liberals. It hadn’t been long since Mr. Mulroney, the former conservative Prime Minister and Mr. Harper’s master, was accused. That was why Mr. Harper only managed to form his minority government in 2006. The same thing happened again in 2008. In 2011, he managed to form a majority government with just a little more than 30 percent of the votes cast by people, by making a lot of promises to different strata of the country, sending his Immigration Minister to give speeches in the communities where there were a lot of immigrants and victory in elections could make the conservatives the majority, as well as giving attractive promises in the field of immigration and also exploiting the weakness in the leadership of the Liberal party, the competition between the Liberal party and the NDP, and – based on some allegations (which are still under investigations) — using illegal advertising tricks such as RoboCalls.
Since the day Mr. Harper and his friends took power, they have neither remembered their immigration promises, nor been accountable to public opinion, as if all that were just for the sake of winning a huge majority, which they have at the moment.
These days we have an interesting situation. On one hand, the scandal of Harper and his friends has been made clear to the public and the Canadian people now know that the Prime Minister, who used to claim that he was honest and clean, is not clean at all and even resorts to lying in order to keep in power. On the other hand, his loyal friend and famous supporter, Mr. Ford, the mayor of Toronto, has made trouble for him as his scandal has made the media all over the world talk about Toronto and Canada, so that this time the Prime Minister’s main concern is to keep away from him, just as he kept away from Senator Duffy, which led to more scandal.
It’s not surprising that Mr. Prime Minister and his loyal friends refrain from commenting on Ford. The mayor of the biggest city of Canada was involved in a scandal yet the Prime Minister cannot speak about his corruption or at least condemn it for advertising purposes.
As we have seen, corruption is widespread and those who were supposed to protect people’s rights and to prevent the financial resources of people from being wasted are instead pioneers in violating these rights.
What can we do, other than actively try to prevent corrupt people from taking power? By the way, what percentage of us who have the right to vote went to the polls and voted vigilantly?
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