OTTAWA — With 14 months to go until Jean Chretien's retirement, Paul Martin is finally in sight of the twin prizes he has sought for so long - the leadership of the Liberal party and the big corner office occupied by the prime minister of Canada.

It's tempting, in fact, to see the leadership race that will unfold in the new year as just a formality. Martin, with more money in the bank, more MPs on his side and more rank-and-file Liberals signed up, has the obvious edge over Industry Minister Allan Rock, Deputy Prime Minister John Manley and Heritage Minister Sheila Copps.

"He has such a huge lead it's a pro forma anointment now rather than a contest," says pollster Frank Graves of Ekos Research.

Graves also believes that Martin has such "enormous political capital" with the public that he's virtually certain to win a majority government in the next general election.

And yet there are nagging questions.

Other than burning ambition and a juggernaut of a backroom organization, what would Martin bring to the job? And how would he pay the political debts he incurred to get it?

"Frankly, I don't think he's showing the leadership you expect the next prime minister to have," says Henry Jacek, a political scientist at McMaster University in Hamilton.

He sees Martin as evasive on major policy issues and too willing to exploit divisions within the Liberal caucus to undermine Chretien and advance his own cause.

"It hasn't been pretty the way he's behaving," says Jacek. "It's starting to tarnish the job he's about to get."

The Martin team, long berated by fellow Liberals for its take-no-prisoners campaign tactics, has been trying to soften its image recently.

Negotiations are underway, for example, to revamp party membership rules that were widely perceived as favouring the front-runner and hampering efforts of other contenders to catch up.

"The last thing we want is a suggestion that Paul Martin's support within the party is a function of his control of this set of rules or that set of rules," says Scott Reid, a spokesman for the former finance minister.

At issue are rules imposed over the last two years by Martin-controlled provincial party executives in Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta that drastically restricted the number of membership forms available for mass sign-up campaigns.

Rock, Copps and Manley had all complained bitterly that the rules stymied the kind of recruitment drives they need to mount to challenge Martin.

Reid maintains the Martin camp is now "supportive and enthusiastic" of the discussions, initiated by Liberal president Stephen LeDrew and a handful of other party officials, to loosen membership restrictions.

Others are skeptical, saying Martin's people have raised nit-picking objections behind the scenes and tried to delay implementation - apparently with the goal of leaving opponents as little time as possible to take advantage of the new, more open regime.

"The draft rules look good, but it may be too late to do any good," said a senior organizer for another candidate who asked not to be named.

More galling to some Liberals - especially Chretien loyalists - was the way Martin employed a legion of backbench MPs to help him elbow his way to the top.

The prime minister, after all, did not decide on his own to retire after nine years in power. He was forced out.

The flashpoint came at a cabinet meeting in late May where Chretien issued an edict to all his ministers to halt their early, underground leadership campaigns.

Martin was the only one to refuse. He manoeuvred Chretien into dumping him from the finance portfolio in June, a move that sparked a storm among Martin's backbench supporters.

It was in the face of that backbench revolt - and the eventual prospect of losing a leadership review at the next party convention - that Chretien finally announced in August he would retire in February 2004.

That didn't end the turmoil.

During the fall parliamentary session the prime minister often looked like a man leading a shaky minority government, not the third straight majority of which he was once so proud.

When Martin and his followers demanded reforms in the selection of Commons committee chairs, Chretien calculated the numbers, made the best of things by declaring a free vote and accepted the inevitable defeat.

When the government was embarrassed by a massive cost overrun on the federal gun registry, and backbenchers balked at voting any more money for the project, Chretien acquiesced and cancelled a vote on the funding.

Even Chretien's victories came with a cost.

Martin and every other Liberal MP voted with the prime minister to ratify the Kyoto accord on climate change - but only after Martin complained at length about how Chretien was handling the file.

The squabbling only got worse once the Common adjourned for Christmas, as a half-dozen Martin supporters on the backbenches publicly suggested that February 2004 was too long to wait for Chretien to quit politics.

"I have been elected by the people of Canada to run a government, not to leave," the prime minister retorted. "I have to serve the mandate that I have been given."

Natural Resources Minister Herb Dhaliwal, who is thinking of running as a long-shot leadership candidate, has suggested Chretien's backbench critics simply want to speed up the day when they can get into a Martin cabinet.

"We've got politics of ambition and politics of division being played," said Dhaliwal.

Jack Siegel, a Toronto lawyer and member of the Liberal national executive who has had his own run-ins with the Martin camp, also finds the squabbling hurtful and chalks it up to naked ambition.

"They're not interested in what's in the best interests of the party," Siegel says of the MPs who continue to snipe at Chretien. "That just slows down their personal schedules."

Martin has repeatedly insisted he's content to abide by the timetable set out by Chretien, with a leadership convention in November 2003 and a transfer of power three months after that.

But the former finance minister has been reluctant to rebuke any backbenchers who say otherwise.

In effect, say critics, he's putting short-term gain ahead of his longer-term interests. He wins immediate support from the anti-Chretien MPs in caucus but postpones the day of reckoning when - assuming he wins the leadership - he will face the task of restoring tattered party unity.

David Docherty, a political scientist at Wilfrid Laurier University, thinks it could turn out to be a bad deal.

"He's going to win the leadership, but he has to start worrying about the day after the convention," says Docherty.

"Now is not the time to make enemies, now is the time to build bridges. He's got to get that message across to some of his wilder folks or it's a real potential for disaster."