http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1076627414167&call_pageid=968332188774&col=968350116467'OTTAWA—After two days of rudderless weaving and bobbing, Prime Minister Paul Martin finally threw Jean Chrétien's former palace guard to the sharks circling his government ship over the federal sponsorship scandal yesterday, but not before spilling some of his own blood in the water.
On the day of the auditor-general's report earlier this week, the news that Martin was ready to cut loose from the government payroll the influential Liberals on whose watch the sponsorship scandal was allowed to happen would have come across as a courageous act of leadership. It might even have allowed the government to escape the brunt of the storm that has engulfed Parliament Hill this week.
But by the time Martin showed up at the National Press Theatre yesterday with advisers in tow, crisis management had morphed into damage control.
For all of the decisiveness Martin exhibited as he made his overdue course correction, it still amounts to an admission that he initially misjudged the public mood and, as a result, mishandled the first major crisis of his tenure.
The Prime Minister now concedes the obvious, i.e. that only political will at the highest levels of the government could have allowed the sponsorship program to function in defiance of every accounting rule, not to mention a number of laws.'
-Martin is not handling this pressure well. He needs to fire somebody else quickly, but to do so risks a Liberal Civil War between Martinites and Chretienists. That does not look good in the lead up to the election. Will it be postponed?
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