DouG
COLLINS

POLITICS IS full of confusion, that being the nature of
democracy. All the same, some of the things being said with
regard to the Margo Furk firing are a bit much. Like her
belief that her losing her job was ‘‘politically motivated.’’

It may or may not have been.
Not being privy to the thoughts of
the guy who dropped the axe on
her, I wouldn’t know. What I do
know, though, is that the job she
had with the Vancouver Trade and
Convention Centre was politically
motivated in the first place. So
what’s all the excitement about?

Be assured that it is not my in-
tention or desire to knock Mrs.
Furk. She is one of my favorite
public people. Bright. Brilliant,
even. Would that she were the
M.P. for Capilano-Howe Sound!

If the firing was politically
motivated, however, it means only
that she hung her hat on the wrong
gang. She did her best at the last
Socred leadership convention, for
instance, to push Grace McCarthy
into the top spot.

Fair enough. But she lost. So
when the empire known as the
B.C. Enterprise Corporation was
wrenched from McCarthy's hands
and that lady became the Socred
Spider Lady, working night and
day to push Bil! Vander Zalm off
his perch, it would have been
understandable if word seeped
down that Grace's supporiers were
also persona non grata. To repeat,
I'm nvt saying it happened that -
way, but that if it did, it would
have been understandable.

As Gertrude Stein might have
put it, patronage is patronage is
patronage, and a push is a push is
a push.

Something else: Mrs. Furk was
asked to run as a candidate in
Point Grey, but that was reported-
ly ruled out when she refused to
pledge total support to the
premier. It was after that that she
was given the heave-ho. .

The impression has been created
that there was a connection be-
tween those two events. I find that
scenario difficult to swallow, how-
ever. Even the Socreds are not so
ham-handed as to fire someone
simpiy because she didn’t want to
become # candidate for office.
That would be a bit too crass for
any political party outside of
Nicaragua. Sr am | being naive?

i have not wasted my time trying
to get any of the protagonists in
this litthe drama to talk because

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they have made it clear that they
are not talking. Not much,
anyhow. But sometimes common
sense tells the story even though
conspiracy theories are the most
popular. .

Here’s one possible and simple
explanation: I heard quite a long
time ago that McCarthy had used
up buckets of money in her em-
pire, and that that was one of the
reasons it was taken away from
her. If I had been able to pin it
down I would have written about it
at the time, but no one wanted to
talk for the record.

The story was that among other
things she was granting heaps of
costly contracts. In the absence of
someone spilling the beans, of
course, it is difficult to pin such
things down without being able to
look at the books. But given such a
scene, isn’t it possible that the
Furk firing and other dismissals
were a justifiable attempt to
economize? if it was, then Mrs.
Furk was more of a victim of her
own friends than a victim of

" Vander Slam viciousness.

All this leads one to speculate or
the sad state of Social Credit. It is
a wondrous thing, is it not, when
at a nomination meeting over in
Point Grey, no one wanted to hear
about the Slam. He was the guy
who couldn't be asked to dinner,
sort of thing.

Whether he will last, and
whether the Socreds can last as a
governing party, will depend on
whether the many quarrelling par-
ties within a party that constitute
Social Credit today can forget
their differences in time to face the
common foe.

Right now, I doubt that they
can. The factions remind me of
nothing so much as the gangs that
roamed Ancient Rome before the
fall, trying to find someone who
would suit them as emperor while
the barbarians stood at the gates.

If things go on like this, we can

to see Aziz Khaki become

rongs
case it would be wise for me to
emigrate to the Falklands. You
too, ma) . @

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9 - Wednesday, February 1, 1989 - North Shore News

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