Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Sunday, April 29, 2012

Ministerial bling

PRIME MINISTER Stephen Harper should fire Bev Oda, his minister of bling and international development.

One luxury Canada can do without in budget-trimming times is a foreign aid minister who goes in for conspicuous consumption at the public’s expense.

Ms. Oda showed appallingly bad judgment last June in having her staff move her to one of London’s swankiest hotels, the famous Savoy, when she attended an international conference on immunizing children in poor countries.

She then left taxpayers to foot the bill for this self-indulgent whim for 10 months before reimbursing them $1,353.81 last Monday, a few hours after The Canadian Press broke the story.

As a crowning insult, Ms. Oda had an aide explain she broke no spending rules, but didn’t want taxpayers to pick up the tab. It took another day for her to manage an apology.

What a feeble pack of excuses. Ministers should set a personal example for their departments on responsible travel spending.

If Ms. Oda needs 10 months or a rulebook to tell her the Savoy was not a legitimate public expense, she has no business being in charge of a department. As for reimbursing taxpayers after being outed, there’s no credit in that.

This is Ms. Oda’s second embarrassing bling outburst as a minister. At the 2006 Juno Awards in Halifax, she and her staff blew $5,500 on limousines. She later repaid $2,200 of that. Yet her fancy for limousines has endured.

On Monday, Ms. Oda finally repaid the cancellation cost of her original booking at the London conference, plus the expense of upgrading to a $665-a-night Savoy room. It took several more days for her to accept responsibility for the $2,850 cost of a limousine to ferry her between the five-star conference hotel, which wasn’t good enough for her, and the Savoy, advertised as “the last word in style, luxury and discreet technology.”

When the government is cutting $380 million from the aid budget, the last word for this sort of ministerial behaviour is revolting.

Canada needs a foreign aid minister whose attention is focused on her job and on those who need our help, not on the splendour of her hotel room.

Original Article
Source: the chronicle herald
Author: editorial

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