As I wrote in the introduction of my last report during the election, the campaign strategy of Martin Liberals “was to wait for my story to break so that they could turn the campaign into a nasty spitting match”. Martin Liberals knew that the issues contained in my story would be the deciding ones of the election.
My other assumption was that opposition parties also knew about my story and were prepared to deal with it once it broke. Looking back, it indeed looked like the election was going to be largely decided on the issues of my story.
Personally, right at the start of the campaign, through some very unusual - but to me, not surprising anymore – circumstances, I was suddenly left without a lawyer to represent me in dealing with the mischief charges associated with my protest on Pattullo Bridge. Because the strict and unfair bail conditions - which were mostly a result of my lack of legal access at the initial court appearance - brought me considerable hardship, which lasted till this day, I had to take the two court appearances on my own in the middle of the campaign very seriously. My legal problem took away some of my time and energy in the first week of the campaign and also in early January.
Despite these and other personal difficulties, at the beginning of the campaign, I felt my long journey to seek justice for Cecilia Zhang was about to finally come to an end. In fact, despite my tough financial situation, I bought a new computer and signed up for two Internet Service Providers so that I would not encounter those wired “technical difficulties” like I had done before. I was prepared to join the campaign fray.
Of course, I was aware that both United States and Chinese governments had fought at the background of my story in the summer, but I was not too concerned about it. Even for their throwing nuclear bombs at each other over my head – figuratively speaking - I had always thought, despite my initial surprise, that it was just a “phony war”, to use a catch phrase of the time.
To me, what my story is about has always been quite straightforward – it’s about right and wrong. On the wrong side were Martin government, Bush administration and Matthew Li. It was a huge scandal and embarrassment for these two governments. On the right side Canadian people would, once my story broke, undoubtedly join the opposition parties and me.
As for the Chinese government, they were naturally on the right side. From reading Li Yang’s articles – many of which, I believe, contained Chinese government’s messages to me - since last July, my feeling was that they had always been eager to see my story break, in stark contrast with the cover-up by Martin government and Bush administration. This was understandable as they could then gain some diplomatic or moral points over the Bush administration from the fallout of this scandal. They could also, maybe, in a way, get back to Bush administration for their attempt to “parachute” Mr. Matthew Li into Beijing.
However, several events in the early goings of the campaign together changed my perspective and resulted in my eventual “limited participation” which took place mostly at the end of the campaign. These included Paul Martin’s interview on Vancouver radio station CKNW on December 5; his speech at UN Climate Change Conference in Montreal on December 7; US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s article on Washington Post on December 11; and Li Yang’s re-publishing of an old article on December 12.
