Concealed agreements

The Ottawa Citizen reports that the Cons have come full circle. Having pushed Alan Riddell out of the way to make room for whistleblower Allan Cutler as a symbol for accountability and transparency, they appear to have managed to pressure Riddell into keeping quiet and going along with the party line:

The Conservative party has reached an out-of-court settlement with Alan Riddell in the Ottawa lawyer's libel suit against Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the party's president, a party statement says.

The one-paragraph statement says nothing about the terms of the settlement and does not name Mr. Harper or party president Don Plett...

Mr. Riddell said yesterday he could not comment on the terms of the settlement...

Mr. Riddell added that now that the issue has been settled, he looks forward to supporting Mr. Harper and working on behalf of the party in future elections. The party had revoked Mr. Riddell's membership, but he was unable to disclose whether it is being reinstated.

Now, there's little indication as to why Riddell would be eager to once again start working for a party which pushed him out the door, and which indeed doesn't appear willing to publicly announce that it's letting him back in. Which leads me to wonder whether Riddell's positive-sounding statement (and subsequence silence) may have been the Cons' price for paying out what they owed.

But then, it still remains to be seen whether the Cons will later try to deny the terms of the settlement as they did with the agreement which induced Riddell to drop his candidacy in the first place.

Whatever the merits of settling from Riddell's perspective, the implications for the Cons are clear: the secrecy behind the settlement offers just one more example of the party's belief that accountability applies only to others. And while Riddell may no longer be fighting to bring this particular incident into the public eye, the fact that the Cons see something worth covering up even this late in the proceedings suggests that there's plenty more worth exposing - if anybody's willing to blow the whistle.

(Hat tip to Jeff.)