Reply #5: Tom Flanagan comments...

[tuvor]

Meanwhile, Harper’s former campaign director and emerging critic, Tom Flanagan, took the fake lake as an opportunity to compare his one-time boss to a famously deceptive 18th century Russian general.

“Clearly it’s inconsistent with Reform values to have this seemingly out-of-control spending,” said Flanagan. “To me it seems impossible to justify. I can’t understand why the government would spend that kind of money for creating, sort of, a Potemkin village.” Potemkin was a powerful Russian general said to have deceived Catherine the Great by building a series of fake villages along the banks of the Dnieper River to impress the monarch at the value of her new conquests as she floated past.

http://www.edmontonsun.com/news/canada/2010/06/07/14291191.html