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Will Michael Kroger’s corruption sink the Victorian Liberal Party?
Gerard Jackson
This brazen act of corruption should have been enough to not only cancel the administrative committee’s meeting and summarily appoint Prodos as party candidate but also justify the expulsion from the Liberal Party of McCraith, Hannon, Barry, Sheezel and every other slimy Krogerite who was involved in rigging this farce. And, above all, the corrupt Michael.
(Kroger has also succeeded in getting his ex selected as a federal senate candidate. A women described in private by one prominent Liberal as a “walking disaster”. An opinion shared by his colleagues
For this bunch of anti-democrats procedure means rigging the rules to win the game. One of them, Helen Kroger, admitted that as a senator her job would be to reform the state Party. This is Kroger code for entrenching the power of the man who see himself as the D. B. Norton of the Liberal Party).
However, being the shameless hacks that they are the Krogerite gang are persisting with their farce on the grounds that they can do as they damn well like — and that includes goose-stepping over the rights of the Richmond South Branch, smearing candidates who get in their way and rigging committee meetings.
Instead of lying down and taking a beating from Kroger’s thugs Prodos did a Metaxas and decided to fight. His defiance sent Kroger’s stooges into disarray. They were left with only two alternatives, only one of which was honourable. Naturally they rejected that one in favour of treachery. This has had the result of attracting the kind of media attention that the Liberal Party hierarchy likes to avoid.
Curiously enough the leftwing Crikey also decided to join the fray — on the side of the Krogerites. It published an article by an anonymous ‘reporter’ maligning Prodos as a “serial pest” and accusing him of “shady” dealings. In other words, Prodos is a pestilent crook. Even stranger, Misha Ketchel, Crikey’s amnesiac editor, is unable to recall who wrote the article. It seems our editor forgot to take his medication.
Far be it from me to repeat rumours, but since the threat of legal action has been raised against Crikey certain people have suddenly decided to finger Julian Sheezel, state director of the Liberal Party, suggesting that it was he who instigated the libellous attack on Prodos in a sleazy attempt to blacken his name. Sheezel, as some readers may recall, is the same Krogerite toad who made a grovelling apology to Steve Mayne, former owner of Crikey.
To top it off, I have also been told that Sheezel, along with the rest of Kroger’s integrity-challenged appointees, will be sitting on the administrative committee that has already foreordained Prodos’ electoral fate. Shamelessness does not describe this pack of double-crossing bastards.
If my informants are right the odour from Kroger’s cloacal activities are beginning to reach members of the Party’s hierarchy and some of them are not very pleased. Irrespective of what the blue-blooded Kroger thinks, not all of the Liberal Party hierarchy are dumb — or at least not that dumb. Some of them feel that Kroger is creating a public relations nightmare that can only be avoided by selecting Prodos as the candidate. After all, they reason, Richmond is an unwinnable seat and Prodos is a local boy. Unfortunately for the Party, Kroger is as arrogant as he is politically stupid, meaning that such a sensible face-saving decision is highly unlikely.
Even if Kroger and his band of committee-rigging heavies succeed in rolling Prodos that is unlikely be the end of the matter. That their bastardry could ignite guerrilla warfare against Exhibition Street’s favoured candidatge never occurred to these clods. Then there is the fact that certain members of the Labor Party have been keeping a very close eye on Kroger and his business links to Solomon Lew, who has also been called one of Australia’s biggest corporate crooks. (South Americans have a saying, Mikey: better to be alone than in bad company).
A very close eye indeed. Such as gathering intimate details about the Yannon affair, Lew’s extortion racket and the Country Road scandal, that lovely flight to South Africa that Lew so generously funded — not to mention Kroger’s meeting with his old mate Alan Jones. Apparently there is enough manure here to sink a battle fleet. But as my ALP informant told me: “Right now Kroger is doing so much damage to the Libs it would be stupid of us to get in his way”.
(Incidentally, Kroger is probably aware that old Solly Lew has apparently got himself into more trouble with the law. If Lew ever goes down I would just love to see who he takes with him).
It should be clear to even the thickest Liberal Party hack that things have spiralled out of control to the extent that the grubby Kroger and his greedy stooges could render the state Liberal Party impotent as a political force for years to come. At this stage I believe that only an outrageous Labor Party scandal could save the day for the Libs. And I don’t see that anywhere on the horizon.
The real scandal here is not the libels, character assassinations, backstabbing, lying, etc, carried out by the Kroger gang but the absurdity of a political freak considered by many in the Party as being unprincipled, unscrupulous, unethical and unelectable wielding power with all the morality of a spoiled brat.
Now for a slight digression. Even someone as odious as Kroger is not without media supporters. Let me turn to Andrew Bolt, a Kroger cheerleader with the Herald Sun. Why Bolt decided to carry Kroger’s water is a mystery that many are still pondering given Kroger’s sordid business connections and squalid behaviour. Perhaps it’s time Mr Bolt distanced himself from this mountebank and took a long hard look in the mirror before the once again passes judgement on others.
Gerard Jackson is Brookes’ economics editor
BrookesNews.Com
Monday 26 June 2006
We now know that Marina Walkely, one of the two phony candidates that Kroger’s stick puppets put up against Prodos Marinakis, was not, technically speaking, even a member of the Liberal Party. She had allowed her membership to elapse. Nevertheless, the desperate Krogerites pushed through a fresh membership application and then her application as a candidate for Richmond — despite the fact that she had not been accepted as a member of any Party branch, something required by party rules, as if this lot of hypocrites gives a damn about rules.
Kroger: thinks he is the D. B.
Norton of the Liberal Party