which was covered extensively on national media, increasingly painted Chrétien as a lame duck. During the summer of 2002, a number of backbencher Liberal MPs associated with Martin started to openly criticise Chrétien's leadership, calling on him to resign now or suffer the humiliation of losing the leadership review. Chrétien asked Jim Karygiannis, who had been so effective in signing up supporters for him in 1990 to repeat that performance, only to be told by Karygiannis that Chrétien had never rewarded him by appointing him to the Cabinet as he asked for many times over the years, had not even returned his phone calls to set up a meeting to discuss his possible appointment to the Cabinet and that he was now a Martin man. Karygiannis then called a press conference on July 13, 2002, where he called for Chrétien to retire "with dignity", rather than risk losing a potentially divisive leadership review and avoid having his career end that way. After less than half the caucus committed to support him in August 2002 by signing a letter indicating their support for the prime minister in the up-coming leadership review, Chrétien announced that he would not lead the party into the next election, and set his resignation date for February 2004. Martin was not happy with the 2004 departure date, preferring that Chrétien retire at the end of 2002, but considered it better if Chrétien were to retire than having to defeat him at the 2003 leadership review, which would have been more divisive and would have established the ominous precedent of a prime minister being ousted by his own party for no other reason other that someone else wanted the job. Due to mounting pressure from the Martin camp, Chrétien no longer saw his February 2004 resignation date as tenable. His final sitting in the House of Commons took place on November 6, 2003. He made an emotional farewell to the party on November 13 at the 2003 Liberal leadership convention. The following day, Martin was elected his successor. On December 12, 2003, Chrétien formally resigned as prime minister, handing power over to Martin. Chrétien joined the law firm, Heenan Blaikie on January 5, 2004, as counsel. The firm announced he would work out of its Ottawa offices four days per week and make a weekly visit to the Montreal office. In early 2004, there occurred much in-fighting within