4 - Sunday, January 31, 1993 ~ North Shore News 2 fate’s BY THE time this reaches print, His Majesty Prime Minister Brian Mulroney wil! quite probably have an- nounced his intention (again) — more loudly this time — to continue to rule the beleaguered country. If it turns out [’m wrong, and he does take a walk in the snow, Pll be among the first to throw myself on my knees in a frenzy of grateful candle-lighting and prayer. ' There are, indeed, good reasons to imagine him going to corporate directorship heaven, or taking on some fat, deserved job, like swabbing the steps at the White House, something he has jearned “to do so well. It is admittedly hard to imagine him wanting to go out like his former hero John Diefenbaker, bleeding from a thousand backstab wounds, driven like the hunchback of Notre Dame from the stage. Dief, of course, had gone crazy with power almost from the mo- ment he grasped the tainted sword of office. Bringing him down amounted to regicide, and tore the Conser- vative party apart at the. ; . Quebec-Ontario seam. oe Mulroney, hopeful souls argue, will be spared this fate because Mila will peel him off the wall and lead him away from Parlia- ment Hill by the hand. It’s a lovely thought {and possible, since he teans on her so.” much), but | think there is more of Marie Antoinette in sweet Mila than Mother Theresa." She was, from very carly on in their marriage, an enthusiastic pursuer of power herself, and does not mind being a behind- the-scenes head of state. There are, in fact; perfectly ‘good reasons to bt’ on the Tories, even under: Mulroney, getting back into power insome sort of coalition: with the ‘Reform, Party and the. Bloc Quebecois, while the Liberals and New Democrats and maybe even the National Party fragment the remaining vote. Mulroney is a consummate po- ‘litical strategist, a genius of sorts, one has to admit. It is not. jist that he is brilliant / at what he does; he is doubly formidable because he’s capable of nearly any trick, having learned to play dirty from his first days as -astarting-level party flunkie at . Saint Francis Xavier University i in the mid-1950s. If a Tory insider in these days had dirty tricks that needed to be "performed, Mutroney was s there, STRICTLY PERSONAL whether it was to smuggle bull semen or plant rumors aimed at destroying someone’s career. He never hesitated for a moment to suck up to party bigshots. As John Sawatsky showed in such lurid detail in Mulroney: The Politics of Ambition, he had a taste and a talent for it. From the beginning of his quest for the highest office, little Brian was a gifted brown-noser and a positively first-class backstabber. The guy to this day remains a nearly pathologicai control freak, with a drive that borders on lust for wealth and power. Oh well, a perfect combo if you want to make it. I don’t see him letting go of his throne graciously, however. And even if he was capable of bowing out, there are plenty of people around him trying to talk him into hanging on because their own sweet butts depend on it. o The case reportedly being made to Mulroney by his inner circle is the old Apres moi, fe deluge argument. _ Especially if Robert Bourassa is forced out by.cancer, there will be no strong federal presence to hold Quebec on side. The polls may say Mulroney i is as royally loathed in his home province as he is elsewhere, but he did manage two sweeping ma- jorities that reversed a century of francophone Tory niisfortune. His first sweep of Quebec was considered nothing short of a po- litical miracle, remember.'A guy who can zap loaves and fishes gets fancy ideas about himself. Delusions notwithstanding, Mulroney reminds me right now of King Jobn trying to face down his surly barons. Their faces are eloquent, the contenders for the Tory crown, are they not? At a press conference last week, when asked about reports they'd each been warned by the prime minister’s office to back off, Bar- bara McDougall gushed the obligatory praises of King Brian, while everyone around her tried not to throw up. Stricken would be a good word to describe the expressions of Kim Campbell, Jean Charest, Mike Wilson and Perrin Beatty, stricken at the thought of going down the tubes with the Sun-God from Baie Comeau. ‘ You can only maintain so much of a mask in public, and those five frozen faces were at their fracture point. But then, so is nearly everything else in the ravished land. This country needs renewal in the worst way. We are, in fact, mired in a depression, with our national debt quite literally ont of control. Jobs are hemorrhaging southward. Our gigantic infra- structure, the sewers, the roads, the power grids, the reactors, the tarmacs and tracks, are crumbl- . ing. A little-reported fact is that there was a huge increase in the number of rats in Toronto last summer, not due so much to the increased number of composters or the rain, but because the once-mighty sewer mains are breaking apart. ('m not suggesting it’s all his fault, but for the last seven years it has been his responsibility, and he has obviously failed, failed, failed. Yet I don’t think he gets it. If he sees an opening, Mulroney, the supreme oppor- tunist, will be unable to resist picking the pocket of fate one more time. LC.B.C BCAA & ARA APPROVED COLLISION CENTRE FA-S-T COLLISION REPAIRS SHElg, FREE COURTESY CARS FIA QUALITY WORKMANSHIP ESS PRECISION REPAIRS SATISFACTION GUARANTEED FREE SarMATES & 24HR. INFORMATION CONSULTATION 229-9000 iL Lexa Beginning this March, we will offer an exciting new Lexus model. 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