In my list of predictions for the coming year, which I just completed the other day, I said that the Progressive Conservatives under the Leadership of Patrick Brown would win this coming June Election and he'd become the Premier of Ontario...Canada's largest Province.
That will now not happen...Patrick Brown has just resigned his Leadership allegedly due to two sexual indiscretions of some 10 years ago.
For me personally, there is both good and bad in this development: the good being that I will now likely be able to vote Conservative in the coming Election. The bad part is that Politics is a dirty business and despite my misgivings about Brown as Party Leader, I feel very sorry for him... he did not deserve to have it come to an end in this way.
That said, it is somewhat ironic that Brown had this hidden in his closet, a year or so ago, when he cashiered our own Member of the Legislature... Jack MacLaren from the Party. MacLaren had made an off-colour joke at a 'male, off the record charity fundraiser' the joke, is alleged to have been given to Jack to say by his Wife. Knowing Jack as I do, I suspect his wife was just trying to make her straight-laced farmer husband look just a little more like 'one of the guys'.
Looking back now it seems to me to have taken a lot of gall on the part of Patrick Brown to have acted so swiftly and decisively in regard to MacLaren when his own record in these matters was less than pristine.
So what did he do?
Again, both events are alleged to have occurred 10 years or so ago. In one, he kissed a staffer and when she resisted and asked to go home, he drove her home.
The second, involved oral sex. He asked a woman to give him oral sex and she started to do just that. Then she stopped saying she did not want to have this go any further. So what did Brown do? He stopped.
On the Harvey Weinstein sexual assault scale, Brown's actions barely register.
Could this just come down to Patrick Brown's ability as a Lover, as his ability as a Leader, is wanting?
I remember vividly, an elderly Statesman of the olde school upon hearing that one of his colleagues had been charged with sexual harassment commented, 'has the guy not learned by now how to approach a woman".
But there is something in the air that does not smell right.
I spoke earlier today with my life-long friend Johnny who summed it up quite nicely, ..."there is someone(s) out to destroy Brown" and I agree. It just does not add up.
And to have his entire senior staff quit on him too makes little sense if the 10 year old assertions really contain so little substance. I never had any use for his staff and maybe this is just another example of why I have held that belief. But just maybe they know something that we don't. With so many involved, it will soon come out.
And, if there is nothing there but what has been reported, it is another example of Brown's Deficient Leadership since he was the one who put these senior staffers in place.
So politics is dirty but as always...very interesting.
As I See It...
'K.D. Galagher'
