When PM Martin can't even get the Toronto Star to back you know he is doing incredibly poorly.
If Prime Minister Paul Martin found himself winding down a poorly focused 10-day Asian tour yesterday by sputtering about polygamy, the Charter of Rights and an election, he has only himself to blame.
...But officials from the outset acknowledged Martin had no specific goals for his five-nation trip. That left him open to being upstaged by others, because he was not making headlines himself.
In Beijing yesterday, Conservative MP Jason Kenney trumped Martin by placing flowers at the home of Communist reformer Zhao Ziyang, a hero of the democracy movement who died this week.
Had Martin spoken out forcefully for democracy, religious freedom and human rights, he would have avoided this embarrassment.
Instead, he chose to praise China's "considerable progress" in these areas, even as bureaucrats suppressed public displays of mourning for Zhao, harassed a Canadian TV crew and revoked visas for Canadian journalists who were to travel with the Prime Minister.
While Martin did urge China to "go much further" on human rights, the optics did not look good.
I feel for PM Martin on this. China is a difficult situation as the potential market is too great to ignore, but human rights violations are too great to ignore as well. The hope of course is that once the Chinese get the taste of trade and the benefits of a Western economy attititudes will change and they will open up. But you end up looking foolish criticizing someone for ignoring human rights in Communist China.
...Prime ministers who travel must be seen to accomplish something substantial, or risk being sideswiped.
Martin's objectives were fuzzy. The result, sadly predictable.
Now I am obviously partisan, but has PM Martin managed to do anything correctly?
