Former Prime Minister of Canada, John Turner, who was in office for just 79 days, has died aged 91.
Official records have it that the former President, a lawyer by training, also served as justice and then finance minister from 1968-1975. Turner was said to have resigned after arguments with party leader Pierre Trudeau.
Reports have it that Turner resumed his legal work and nine years later won the party leadership.
He called an election and then presided over what observers say was one of the worst campaigns in Canadian history.
His gaffes combined with growing public fatigue with the Liberals, who had been in power for 20 of the previous 21 years, resulted in his party falling from 135 seats in the 282-member House of Commons to just 40.
The Conservatives, under the leadership of Brian Mulroney, swept to power with 211 seats.
It was gathered that despite the result, Turner hung onto his post. In the 1988 election, Turner was a strong opponent of a proposed free trade agreement with the US but lost again to Mulroney.
The Nigerian Canadian Newspaper gathered that as justice minister, he defended reforms to Canada’s Criminal Code that paved the way for LGBTQ rights and legal abortions. But in the finance ministry he faced economic pressures due to the global oil crisis.
His 79-day tenure as prime minister is the second shortest in the country’s history after Sir Charles Tupper, as he advised the Governor General to dissolve Parliament immediately after being sworn in and went on to lose the 1984 election in a landslide to Brian Mulroney’s Progressive Conservatives.
Turner stayed on as Liberal leader and led the Opposition for the next six years, leading his party to a modest recovery in the 1988 election. He resigned as Liberal leader in 1990 and stepped down as an MP at the 1993 election.
Turner was Canada’s first Prime Minister born in the United Kingdom since Mackenzie Bowell in 1896. He was the fourth longest-lived Prime Minister.
