Friday, August 30, 2002
Rehabilitating one’s reputation - THE COMMENTARY
By Joseph Planta
VANCOUVER -- Yesterday, Glen David Clark, the former premier of the Province of British Columbia was exonerated in the corruption trial he’s been suffering since being forced to resign in 1999. The struggle faced by Clark and his family has been one that friends and foes alike have sympathised in. The current Liberal government, who derided and haggled Clark to resign when in opposition, have showed their political comradeship by refusing to back down from paying all the legal bills incurred by Clark in defending himself.
Glen Clark was never one of my favourite politicians. I thought he was a divisive force in the ultra-polarised political climate of BC. He was also instrumental in the disintegration of the BC New Democratic Party. For a time, I supported Ujjal Dosanjh and his effort to rebuild the party damaged by Clark. It was an unmanageable combination to have ‘socialism’, for which the NDP had tried to maintain, and ‘capitalism’, which Clark and Co. tried to curry (and failed) favour with. Political differences aside, I do admire the Clark’s and all they’ve put up with. Politics, as Gordon Campbell will concur, is not a pretty business. Sure, you’re in the public eye, and sure you get to be all that and more; however there are heavy costs and the saga suffered by Glen Clark and his family has been the ultimate cost for public service.
Public service, though, comes with rightful responsibility. Madam Justice Bennett in her ruling said in essence that Clark, whilst premier, wasn’t thinking properly and should not have had his then friend Dimitrios Pilarinos do construction work for him, as he was applying for a gaming licence. The conflict-of-interest was apparent, that we’re here digesting the result of years spent by the Supreme Court wading through the motions. As Clark himself admitted, he did err and were he to do it again he probably would not have had his deck built by his ‘friend.’
Glen Clark emerged from the court house Thursday heavily scrummed by the local and national media. It was a scene of relief. The Clark’s are rightfully unburdened by the expense and the public ordeal of a trial. Glen Clark had been found not guilty of the corruption charges that brought down his political career and his party. But will that party become unburdened as well? That’s the big question to those who watch politics now, and who go on watching regardless of what political casualties are left by the wake of public opinion. Mind you the NDP government was brought down by a combination of Glen Clark and his conflict-of-interest with pal Pilarinos and his performance as a leader. Ditto his government’s inability to govern with a shred of competence. Those reasons combined is why the NDP was reduced to two seats just over a year ago.
I’m reading Liz Smith’s muckraking memoir Natural Blonde right now. Smith is a socialite gossip columnist at the New York Post and I’ve just come to the part where she talks about her run-ins with the late President Nixon, back in the 1980s. Smith, a left-leaning liberal Democrat, was an ardent proponent of getting Nixon out of the White House during the whole Watergate debacle. Smith recounts how in the late 1980s, Nixon would make occasional appearances on the New York social scene and how when they’d run in to each other, Nixon would always greet Smith warmly making inane chit-chat. Smith says she felt rather “creepy” being so civil to a man whose politics she despised and whose conduct she denounced. Then again, says Smith, he was a disgraced politician attempting to be remembered in a more favourable light than that of 1974, when he had to leave public office so shamefully.
I am not comparing Glen Clark to Richard Nixon. Good God, Nixon is on a completely different level both in terms of intellect and crimes against public graces. What I’m wondering here in this space, in this time soon after the end of his career and so soon following this verdict from the Supreme Court, is whether Glen Clark will ever be judged more favourable than he is judged now. Nixon, by the time he died was an elder statesman. I don’t fathom Clark gaining any such role, but I do hope that when all is said and done he’ll get a fair assessment. We as voters (and count the media too) treat pols too unfairly. We exalt them to heights they’re not capable of only to bring them down. Perhaps at the same time even. Glen Clark’s reputation is low now. His party is in ruins and he’s remained unrepentant. I don’t think he even could improve on his shitty reputation. However when the time comes he deserves a fair shot at trying.
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