The Sandwich Board Conspiracy

Victoria, British Columbia
48° 39' North; 123° 26' West

As usual Sean Holman at Public Eye does us all a great service by posting up raw feeds on the Basi/Virk/Basi sandwich board conspiracy on a number of fronts. At the moment we'd like to comment on three.....

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First, directly from the charges:

Count 1
Udhe Singh (Dave) BASI......directly or indirectly, being an official, demanded, accepted or offered or agreed to accept for himself rewards, advantages and benefits being money, meals, travel and employment opportunities as consideration for cooperation, assistance, exercise of influence or an act or omission in connection with matters of government business including a bid by OmniTRAX Inc. to obtain the operating rights of BC Rail from the Government of British Columbia, contrary to Section 121 (1)(a)(ii) of the Criminal Code.

Which, as Mr. Holman rightly points out, begs the question....Just who paid out those rewards/bribes anyway? Now, if one were to go back in time and connect some dots you might come to the conclusion, based on their actions, including decisions to cut and run, that certain high level Provincial Martinis with connections to former Provincial Cabinet Ministers might be involved. And those folks, of course, are not, in and of themselves, the 'elected' members whom the RCMP has repeatedly said are not being investigated.

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Second from a rush transcript of the Media's post charge-a-thon scrum with Generalissimo Geoff Plant:

Attorney General Plant ..... I don't know a whole lot really about what's happened today other than the information that I received a copy of an hour or so ago..... And the question of how this relates to various aspects of B.C. Rail and the CN Rail partnership is a question that is more appropriately directed to Kevin Falcon.

Media Will Kevin Falcon be made available today?

Attorney General Plant I'm not responsible for Kevin's whereabouts.

So is this the opening salvo of an open war between the Martinis and the Neandercons on the slippery and slime-covered decks of the SS Gordon Campbell?

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And finally, it was good to see/read Paul Willcocks to go back at the Generalissimo in an effort to get to the heart of the matter:

Media You've read the information. Were you surprised? I think the public had been led to believe that anything that happened related to the Roberts Bank line. Were you surprised, as a member of government, when you read the information that it was much more extensive?

Attorney General Plant Well what I can say is to confirm the second part of your statement Paul (Willcocks). Which is to say, on the face of it, the charges here are not limited to the port subdivision contract. And I don't know anything about these charges beyond what's on the face of the information. But they clearly appear to be more general - although they appear to only relate to OmniTRAX.

Now, of course, one of Gordo's biggest stonewalling talking points from the beginning has been the fall back position that this debacle, while diversionary, was never really damaging because OmniTrax was not the chosen one. But here's a question we haven't seen asked before..... Did the meddling of the BasiBoys doom the OmniTrax bid for BC Rail from the inside, even unintentionally?
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Update: For a succinct primer/reminder of the affair, see the timeline of major events from Martin McCarvill in UVIC's The Martlet.