4 - The Prince George Citizen - Monday, March 25,1991 Opinion EDITORIAL BOARD: 562-2441. Local SOO Al McNair, Roy Nagel, Pete Miller, Bob Miller TORY RECORD MAY BLOCK COMEBACK Can Mulroney work magic on voters again? OTTAWA — Does Brian Mulroney still have “the magic?” The Conservative party and its elected MPs believe he does. And that belief is the most important influence in federal politics today. “The magic” is the ability to snatch another victory from the jaws of seemingly inevitable defeat. Mulroney and his party have been battered for 16 months by polls suggesting the party is losing key supporters right across the country. But the party machinery stands firm. And its majority in the Commons, despite losses, is in no immediate danger of disappearing. This is largely because Tories are still prepared to believe Mulroney can do again what he did in 1988. Thirteen months before the Nov. 21, 1988 election, Mulroney’s Tories stood at 23 per cent in the polls. Six months before the election, they were still at 28 per cent, in third place behind the Liberals at 39 per cent and the NDP at 31 per cent. But by September 1988, the Tories were up leading at 40 per cent and on election day 43 per cent of Canadians who went to the polls voted to return Mulroney to power. How did he do it? Electoral skullduggery played a part John Turner, the Liberal leader was unfairly portrayed in Tory propaganda as a liar. But Mulroney’s main tactic was just to convince enough Canadians that he was a better leader for the nation than Turner or Ed Broadbent, then leading the New Democrats. One such victory may help pave the way for the nexL Both the Liberals and New Democrats have SERVING THE REGION SINCE 1916 The Prince George w Citizen A Southam Newspaper A. J. McNair, Publisher R. K. Nagel, Editor Doug French, Advertising/Gen. Manager Lisa O'Neill, Business Manager J. D. Perry, Circulation Manager 150 Brunswick SL, Prince George, B.C. V2L 5K9, P.O. Box 5700 Phone 562-2441 Saddam's folly Edmonton Journal The film footage from Kuwait City is eerie. By afternoon the sun shines palely through the black clouds of smoke if it shines at all. Journalists standing against a backdrop of burning oil wells are often shivering. The wells bum at more than 2000 degrees Fahrenheit, but the absence of sunlight has produced winter conditions. This is truly a vision of hell. The Persian Gulf war is over, although a civil war still rages in Iraq. But the casualties of this war, because of its direct and unprecedented damage to the environment, will pile up for a long time to come. The world cannot afford to indulge itself in relief at the war’s end. The environmental problems are pressing and monumental. Far too little information is available. The wartime censorship prevented the gathering of vital information on the extent of damage. Now even the thick cloud of smoke over the gulf prevents investigation by air. The amount of oil spilled into the gulf, and threatening vast areas of the coastline, cannot be guessed. One harrowing glimpse is provided by Randy Thomas, a Vancouver environmentalist and co-founder of the Gulf Environmental Emergency Response Team, a Canadian effort that was one of the first international responses to the environmental disaster now unfolding in the gulf. The Canadian team, bringing oil-fighting equipment and the expertise gained in fighting West Coast spills, is playing a vital role in Bahrain against the advancing oil slick (a slick perhaps 10 times that caused by the Exxon Valdez off Alaska). In a recent newspaper article, Thomas described what he has seen in the gulf and what some reputable scientists fear will happen. The 600-plus oil wells burning in Kuwait threaten to unbalance planetary forces, he writes, and to produce casualties that will reduce the recent war “to a sand-lot scuffle.” Among other horrifying images, he evokes that of Krakatoa, a volcanic island in Indonesia that erupted in 1883, leaving a hole where it had been and creating an atmospheric disruption over the entire planet. Vast areas of the world did not see summer that year. The burning wells in Kuwait, he writes, constitute “a perpetual Krakatoa.” It will take two years to extinguish them. The Iraqi wells were mined and systematically set afire on the orders of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, who before the war invited American troops to enter “the belly of hell.” He preferred an apocalypse to retreat The United Nations coalition inflicted great damage on Iraq, bombing oil refineries and installations. There is no estimate of the environmental damage from that country, much of it now reduced to rubble. The oil fires are burning there, too. Now it is the world’s problem. The first imperative must be to bring together as much information as possible, and quickly. To fight the environmental effects of the war, the true extent of damage must be known. This is vital work for the United Nations, whose environmental officers are on the scene. The second imperative is to find the money to fight this new environmental war. That has not been forthcoming, nor does it seem to be the first priority as the countries of the world line up to wring profits from the rebuilding of devastated Kuwait. But the world’s primary interest is not in profits. If the initial reports of observers like Thomas are borne out, the priorities of the world community will have to shift massively to protect the environment from a threat that now is regional, but may be greater. D O O N E S B U R Y i ...AND WITH OYER. 500 >.Q0U6H!s OIL UUEUS SHLL BURNING OUT OF CONTROL HERB, PETER... rir^cr McGillivray changed their leader since 1988. So Mulroney can play his experience against the untested qualities of the Liberal and NDP leadership. But a political advantage usually has an attached disadvantage. Mulroney’s record may be one thing many Canadians dislike about him. There’s also an element of “fool me twice, shame on me.” The prime minister’s free-trade agreement with the U.S., his main platform plank in 1988, has not produced the economic benefits he promised. Mulroney’s magic will have to be stronger in 1992 or 1993 because he starts from a lower standing. The Angus Reid-Southam News poll shows the Tories at 17 per cent of the decided voters compared to 34 per cent for each of the other main parties. The latest Gallup poll shows the Tories at 16 per cent, the Liberals at 39 and the new Democrats at 30. Tory standing never reached these depths in the 1984-88 term. And the long continuation of these low standings means Canadians are telling the pollsters, month after month, that they’re going to vote against the Conservatives. But to protect themselves against despair, the Tory loyalists have what almost amounts to a mantra. They say Mulroney’s magic will begin to work about six months before the next election, whenever that is. Tory standings will begin to grow. Liberal and New Democrat standings will shrink. There’s no way of proving this is wrong. And as long as the Tories believe in Mulroney’s magic, tliat belief is almost a palpable thing. But there is no precedent in Canadian politics for a governing party to be this low for this long. And the latest Reid poll includes a suggestion that the “new agenda” now being developed by the Tories may not turn the polls around. Canadians, by and large, applauded Mulroney’s leadership during the short, perplexing Gulf war. Nearly 60 per cent of the Reid sample approved “of the! leadership shown by Brian Mul- ’ roney during the Gulf war.” But other questions in the survey ; showed the majority could ap-; proved of what Mulroney did in the war without approving of him. Seventy-five per cent of the surveyed Canadians disapproved of the way Mulroney has performed as prime minister. That was up from 70 per cent in January when the war seemed to be having a small positive effect on his standing with the voters. , If a majority of Canadians are against Mulroney no matter what he does, it will take some mighty strong magic for the Tories to win the next election. But Conservatives, or at least, those in key party positions, are still betting it is possible. That’s magic. \