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OTTAWA - Six months after Prime Minister Stephen Harper first promised a public inquiry into the Mulroney-Schreiber affair, he has yet to name anyone to head the probe or even set an official mandate for it.

That has opposition critics growing increasingly impatient.

"It confirms what I always thought," said Liberal MP Robert Thibault. "He has no intention of having an inquiry, and if there's any way he can stop one, he will."

Thibault contends that Harper's game plan from the start has been to support an inquiry in principle but procrastinate in practice, in the hope that a federal election will pre-empt the need to make a decision.

"Then he doesn't have to call one until we get back, and if he wins a majority, he never will," Thibault contends.

NDP ethics critic Pat Martin also suspects Harper of electoral clock-watching. But he's not sure the prime minister would want to risk going into a campaign without taking an action at all to keep his promise.

An alternative, says Martin, could be for Harper to drag his heels a few more weeks, then name a commissioner who would need months to hire staff and review documents and likely couldn't start public hearings until well into the fall.

That would mean, if the country goes to the polls in early autumn, that the actual testimony - and the accompanying media furor - wouldn't come until after voting day.

"I think that's their best gambit and probably their action plan," says Martin. "It would be the best of both worlds for them. It's a risky game though."

Harper signalled last November he was prepared to hold an inquiry into the tangled business dealings between former Tory prime minister Brian Mulroney and German-Canadian lobbyist and arms dealer Karlheinz Schreiber.

But he bought time by naming David Johnston, pediment of the University of Waterloo, to conduct a preliminary review and recommend what the precise terms of reference should be.

Since then, Johnston has delivered not one but two reports.

In the meantime, the House of Commons ethics committee has conducted it own hearings and tabled its own report - predictably splitting along party lines on what course to take.

The lengthy delay has clearly played to Harper's benefit, says University of Ottawa law professor Ed Ratushny.

"The vast majority of public inquiries are called because of political pressure," he said.