Wednesday, March 26, 2008

And if you don't like Stephen Harper's principles, well, he's got others.


There was the original, principled stand (all emphasis added):

Ottawa has sent a diplomatic protest note [regarding current prisoner Brenda Martin] to Mexico. Norlock said Harper was considering the best way to help Martin, but worried about meddling in Mexico's justice system.

Well, that didn't last long:

An Indian appeal court upheld Mr. Itzhayek's conviction [for a visa violation] on Tuesday, but reduced his sentence to the time he had already served.

Claims that Indian police tricked him into crossing over from Nepal and then demanded a bribe moved Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier to raise the issue with their Indian counterparts.

But I'm guessing they'd rather not use the word "meddling." It's such an ugly word, don't you think?

1 comment:

Ti-Guy said...

It seems a bit inept as well, since the Indian government becomes particularly brittle when Canada forgets its place.

Go get a visa (really just an admission fee to the country) at the Indian High Commission sometime and have fun paying for the experience of being yelled at and bossed around for a couple of hours.