Wikipedia offers the following definition of 'shunning': Shunning is the act of social rejection, the deliberate avoiding association with, and habitually keeping away from, an individual or group. It is a sanction against association, often associated with religious groups and other tightly knit organizations and communities. Targets of shunning can include, but are not limited to, apostates, whistleblowers, dissidents, people classified as "sinners" or "traitors" and other people who defy or who fail to comply with the standards established by the shunning group(s).
I couldn't help but think of the term, and the parts of the definition, (i.e., most parts) that would be applicable to fallen former Conservative cabinet and caucus member Helena Guergis, as she was being interviewed yesterday on Evan Solomon's Power and Politics.
Having discussed her in an earlier blog entry, I will repeat that I have never been especially fond of either her politics or her performance as a cabinet member, but I have to agree with some of her objections over how she was treated by Mr. Harper after unsavoury allegations arouse about her and her husband, allegations that were eventually deemed to be without foundation after an RCMP investigation. Nonetheless, at the first hint of scandal, she was removed both from her Cabinet post, something I can understand happening under the original circumstances, and from the Conservative caucus, something that I can't agree with, essentially rendering her a pariah, a persona non grata to the Party. She was effectively shunned.
In addition to the fact that Guergis seems to have been held to a different standard by Mr. Harper than others (think of Bev Oda, Maxime Bernier and Bruce Carson), the fact that she was expunged from the Party without any due process says much about the Harper style of governance, so thoroughly explored in Lawrence Martin's Harperland as well as in many online and mainstream media publications. It is a style that brooks no deviation, no independence, and requires absolute fealty to the leader. In other words, it is essentially one-man rule, although we have more unflattering ways of describing such governance when it occurs in the Middle East, Africa, and South America.
And that is why, despite the dismissal by some pundits that what happened to Guergis is only part and parcel of the rough game we call politics, I think her treatment is both newsworthy and should be considered by voters as yet another reason they should give serious pause before so blithely casting their ballots in favour of the Conservatives on May 2.
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