With two entrenched parties going at it year after year in B.C. politics, it’s not surprising we’ve had our fair share of scandals.
But this most recent upset over allegations of financial impropriety in the offices of the legislature clerk and sergeant-at-arms takes the cake.
While at first glance it would seem to be a simple matter of sorting out the problems and getting to the bottom of whether there needs to be better checks and balances in place at the legislature, the fact that this issue is taking place as the NDP and Greens try to govern with the slimmest of majorities, one wonders if there isn’t more to it.
If speaker Darryl Plecas is unable to maintain credibility after his most recent outburst and hiring of a friend Allen Mullen as a special advisor, and then recommending him to replace one of the ousted clerks, the BC Liberals will continue to press advantage in what is a proxy war between the major parties.
Both the NDP/Green coalition and the BC Liberals have a lot at stake, with the governing coalition needing Plecas to stay and the Liberals needing him to go.
Certainly, Plecas hasn’t done himself any favours by bringing in a friend to help him with the investigation and later recommending him for a job as seargeant-at-arms. And last week he vociferously defended himself when a wiser course given the current RCMP investigation would have been to stay mum.
Now he has to be able to produce the goods of financial wrong-doing as he has promised to do in January.
The senior legislative officers were led out of the legislature by police on Nov. 20, but so far neither the RCMP nor the B.C. Criminal Justice Branch has provided information about the allegations and the clerks have said they don’t know why they are being investigated.
In the meantime, B.C.’s auditor general can’t sign off on the books until she knows more about the allegations.
All of this is somewhat horrifying to even the most casual observer of the B.C. Legislature and we would hope for more details and cooler heads to prevail in the new year.
