In April 2005, Jack Layton had his chance. The Liberals needed him to save their government. Jack Layton was saying that they needed to be held to account. Layton could have demanded that his price for protecting the Liberals from immediate accounting was for them to have a referendum on instituting a new, more accountable electoral system. But Jack Layton didn't. Instead, he asked for money. Jack Layton broke his election promise. Jack Layton refused to hold the government to account. He sold his principled stand for accountable government for some cold, hard cash. Just like the Liberals, Jack Layton showed that he'll give away accountable government for some money.

Of course, no sooner had Paul Martin escaped his reckoning, he made sure that Jack Layton never got the money for his part of the deal.

In November 2005, Jack Layton got the chance to redeem himself. The Conservatives and Bloc Quebecois were shaming Jack Layton into standing up for accountability. Once again, Jack Layton refused to stand for accountable government. And once again, he refused to make a referendum on proportional representation his prince for supporting the Liberals (he asked for some changes to health care policy, instead).

It should be noted very carefully, dear reader, that Mustafa frequently uses his own idiosyncratic code in this post, and his post should be read in the light of these obsessions. "Accountability" begins and ends with sponsorgate, and Mustafa is apparently unhappy that the government didn't fall on it. There is no further criterion for an election than the trivial peregrinations to which we were subjected. Jack Layton's stand on proportional representation is therefore not valued as a political position in itself, but merely an instrument of Nemesis against the Liberal Party. Jack Layton's political choice, therefore, becomes not a betrayal, evidently, of the goal of proportional representation, but instead of Mustafa's goal of "accountability", a notion that in this context is almost devoid of content.

In this way, Mustafa's post presents itself as not more than another instance of political hackery, certainly on the same level the motives behind the sponsorship programme! A heavy charge, you say? Not so. The sponsorship programme, in its purest intent, was an attempt by the Liberal Party to avoid dealing with the content of constitutional ideas, contenting itself only with the extensional effects of these ideas---in this case on national unity. Mustafa's outrage at Jack Layton is likewise not concerned about the political content of Jack Layton's actions, only concerned with similar extensional considerations---this time on the chronology of the sponsorship scandal. Both discourses are highly corrupting to the ideal focus of politics: policy.

Mustafa Hirji is simply a gold mine for someone (like me) who has a yen for the occasional deconstruction, which is why it is probably not a good idea to let him run amok. And alas, poor old Jack and the NDP get it both ways. If they don't behave like Normal Politicians, some people don't consider them a serious party. And if they do, then people like Mustafa Hirji don't consider them to be a party worth voting for. And that's far more worth worrying about than the failure of the Liberals to fall on the sponsorship scandal, which so apparently disappoints Mustafa.