OTTAWA — What’s next, a reality TV appearance?
Helena Guergis and Rahim Jaffer, once one of Ottawa’s most glamorous, up-and-coming political couples, have tumbled so far and so fast that a date on Wife Swap would not seem outside their current trajectory.
It’s a stunning fall from grace.
Jaffer, 38, was the first Shia Ismaili Muslim elected to Parliament, a one-time Conservative caucus chairman and immensely popular bon vivant.
Guergis, 41, was the minister-in-training, the secretary of state for the status of women and one of a trio of women strategically seated to frame Prime Minister Stephen Harper when he rose to speak during question period in the House of Commons.
He was the son of Ugandan immigrants who fled the dictatorship of Idi Amin and made a solid life in Vancouver and then Edmonton, the father working for Shell before the couple got into the coffee house business.
She was the former Miss Huronia, the brittle beauty queen with claims on being the first parliamentarian of Assyrian descent and sterling family ties in central Ontario’s municipal politics.
As a young MP she won a coveted spot on CBC’s Rick Mercer Report where, at the comedian’s suggestion, she vamped it up in “Bond Girl” character.
When Jaffer, a bachelor of some repute, proposed to the previously married Guergis in October 2007, the Edmonton Journal ran a sepia-tinted yarn that appeared torn straight from the pages of a Harlequin romance.
Jaffer, the newspaper recounted, asked for her hand on the banks of the Athabasca River in Jasper.
“We took our time and enjoyed a long walk,” Guergis told the Journal.
“When we got back to our room at the Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge, he’d arranged to have champagne and chocolate-dipped strawberries waiting.”
The following month, the couple were part of Harper’s entourage to the Commonwealth Summit in Kampala, Uganda, where they had their own high-profile photo-ops arranged by the PMO.
They were married the day after the Oct. 14, 2008 general election. But by then, the fizz was already going flat and life was no longer a bowl of berries.
Jaffer infuriated the prime minister when he lost his Edmonton-Strathcona seat to the New Democrats, denying a Conservative sweep of Alberta.
Rumours he had alienated key party officials were confirmed when the Conservative nomination race in his riding was engineered to shut Jaffer out.
Guergis was having her own struggles.
She had squeaked into office in 2004 by beating the Liberal incumbent in Simcoe-Grey by 100 votes, but won by more than 11,000 in ’06.
The rigours of being a junior cabinet minister, however, were taking their toll.
Amid a rotating cast of office staff, Guergis was castigated in January 2008 for eating canapes at a reception in Guadalajara while Canadian Brenda Martin languished in a Mexican jail 20 minutes away.
It was just one of many stone chips that cabinet mileage was starting to put on Guergis’s glossy political machine.
When Jaffer was charged with impaired driving, cocaine possession and dangerous driving on Sept. 11, 2009, the wheels really started coming off.
Guergis had a much-publicized tantrum at airport security in Charlottetown in February, shortly before Jaffer walked out of court in Orangeville, Ont., with a plea deal that dropped the impaired and possession charges without explanation.
When the Toronto Star released an investigative piece this week that detailed Jaffer’s alleged use of his parliamentary connections to win influence with a businessman who is under police investigation, the gig was up.
On Friday, Harper cast loose his cabinet secretary, not just from the cabinet table but from the Conservative party caucus.
“Last night my office became aware of serious allegations regarding the conduct of the Honourable Helena Guergis,” said Harper, indicating the RCMP are involved.
“In this business, you get the brickbats as well as the bouquets, and when you confront these things you deal with them and that’s what we’ve done.”
The bombshell had reverberations even south of the border. Vanity Fair’s daily blog headlined it as “The Juiciest Canadian Political Scandal We’ve Ever Heard Of.”
Jaffer and Guergis, neither of whom commented Friday, left it to the voracious media pack to choose their own political epitaphs.
“I hope you will continue to look at me and judge me by the sum of my words and deeds and not by this one error,” Jaffer said way back in 2001 after his assistant was caught impersonating the MP for a radio interview.
“In my short time here in Ottawa I have risen in this House on many occasions,” Guergis told the Commons in 2005, “much of the time asking the (Liberal) government to explain itself on the numerous scandals that I am sure the public is getting just as furious about as I am.”
Unlike reality TV, you can’t make this stuff up.