Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Wednesday, March 07, 2012

Conservative party drops Supreme Court appeal on 2006 election spending

OTTAWA—The Conservative party has dropped an appeal at the Supreme Court of Canada over a 2006 federal election dispute with Elections Canada.

The so-called “in-and-out” dispute began when an Elections Canada auditor looked into the party expenses and said the Conservatives had violated campaign financing rules.

Elections Canada maintains the party funnelled money for national ads through 67 local candidates, allowing the party to exceed its spending limit and allowing candidates to claim rebates on expenses they hadn’t actually incurred within their ridings.

Last November, the Conservative party pleaded guilty to election financing charges and paid the maximum fine of $52,000.

Charges against four senior party officials were dropped as part of the plea deal, which also prevented evidence being made public in court.

The party tried to force Elections Canada to pay rebates to candidates who had claimed the disputed advertising as part of their local campaign expenses.

It won the first round in that battle but lost on appeal. The party later won leave to appeal the matter to the Supreme Court of Canada and a tentative date for a hearing had been set for May 14.

In a statement to the media Tuesday, Fred DeLorey, Conservative party spokesman, said, “We are agreeing to disagree and will be dropping our appeal to the Supreme Court.”

Original Article
Source: Star
Author: The Canadian Press

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