Stephen Harper: master manipulator

Stephen Harper: master manipulator

By Nick Davies at the Guardian

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/15/stephen-harper-master-manipulator?CMP=share_btn_fb

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As Harper tries for a fourth term in office at the Canadian federal election next week, he is trailed by an extraordinarily long list of allegations. In the Watergate scandal, all the president’s men were accused primarily of breaking the law to get Nixon a second term in the White House. In Canada, some of the prime minister’s men and women have been accused not simply of cheating to win elections but of conspiring to jam the machinery of democratic government.

Some of these allegations have been proved. In the 11 years since he became leader of the country’s Conservatives, the party has been fined for breaking electoral rules, and various members of Team Harper have been caught misleading parliament, gagging civil servants, subverting parliamentary committees, gagging scientists, harassing the supreme court, gagging diplomats, lying to the public, concealing evidence of potential crime, spying on opponents, bullying and smearing. Harper personally has earned himself the rare rebuke of being found to be in contempt of his parliament.

One of his many biographers, John Ibbitson of the Globe and Mail newspaper, who is more sympathetic than most, concludes: “No prime minister in history and no political party have been loathed as intensely as Stephen Harper and the Conservative party.” Yet this deeply unpopular politician has won three elections in the last nine years. Although the Liberals are showing a late lead in the polls, Harper’s emphasis on his record on security and the economy may yet put a fourth in his trophy cabinet next week. That is what makes Harper’s politics interesting, that he has perfected the tactics of taking and holding power – in spite of the demands of democracy.

His people have been caught out more often than most. That may be because they are more brazen than most (and because they have some particularly feisty investigative reporters on their patch). But, at heart, Harper’s team are not that different from politicians across the developed world who have discovered that democracy is a pretty sweet theory but that, in reality, if you want to get hold of power and use it, there are all kinds of devious moves available that have very little to do with that antique idea.



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