Dead Men Tell No Tales

I came across an interesting press release at the LPC website.

September 23, 2006

MONTREAL - The Liberal Party of Canada (Quebec) reaffirms that Mr. Alfonso Gagliano is not registered on the list of members in good standing of the party. Indeed, Mr. Gagliano has tried to register online on the national Website of the party and may have received an automated message acknowledging the receipt of his request. The latter, however, still had to be approved by the provincial wing of the party. As such, the Liberal Party of Canada (Quebec) confirms that Mr. Gagliano's request has been refused.

In stark contrast we find this piece regarding LPC membership and party loyalty.

Some pertinent excerpts:

MPs supporting Liberal leadership candidate Joe Volpe say they won't desert him, despite allegations his campaign improperly paid for party memberships in Quebec.

"I believe in Joe and I think Joe is very capable to run the party as well as the country," Oak Ridges-Markham MP Lui Temelkovski said yesterday.

He threw his weight behind Volpe (Eglinton-Lawrence), along with Montreal MP Massimo Pacetti (Saint-Leonard-Saint Michel), and Ontario's Joe Comuzzi (Thunder Bay-Superior North) and Wajid Khan (Mississauga-Streetsville).

"He's a hard-working man and will continue to work with the party," Temelkovski added.

The Toronto Star reported yesterday dozens of people in Montreal-area ridings including at least two dead people had been improperly signed up as federal Liberal party
members.

So whats up here? Amid a growing controversy over party memberships the LPC takes the time to issue a press release saying Alfonso Gagliano is persona non grata. I mean really, after all those years of tough slogging for the party, packing all those heavy brown envelopes...this is the thanks he gets!!!!

But Why???

OH.....I just came across this. It seems Alfonso has taken up writing. Some of the juicier tidbits:

In the book, Gagliano maintains as he has throughout his tribulations that he did no wrong as minister of public works, under whose auspices the tainted sponsorship program was run, and that he is the innocent victim of a smear campaign by elements of the media and his political enemies, foremost among them Paul Martin.

In a passage entitled "the pathetic spectacle of Paul Martin," Gagliano charges that Martin used the sponsorship affair to discredit Chretien and his loyalists, and suggests that he pumped up the scandal to distract from controversy over $70 million in federal subsidies that his family firm was accorded while he was finance minister.

Alfonso concludes with this observation:

Gagliano, who came to Canada from Sicily when he was 16 years old, takes pride in his achievements and praises Canada for making them possible. But he also maintains that ethnic prejudice played prominently in his fall from grace.

"I believe that if my name had been Lapierre, Arcand or Cournoyer, I would not have been accused, condemned and executed in the public arena without having been heard out. My greatest misfortune in political torment was to be what I am, with my name, my accent, my features and my personality."

While I can feel Alfonso's pain, a quick inspection of the ethnicity of the deceased Liberal members in question would seem to indicate otherwise.

No Alfonso.......If I understand this correctly the good ship Liberal prefers dead members to live ones with word processors.

Arrrrrr Matey!!!

Syncro