Voters would have had to confront their own ineptitude and gullibility, and ask themselves, “Why isn’t she premier, instead of that doofus Davis?”
Michael is on her way out as NDP leader, but she has definitively proven in the past week her exit will be the province’s loss. (No offence intended to socialist heir apparent Earle McCurdy, who will go from fishing to filibustering.)
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At some point, the governing Tories will overestimate their ability to manipulate the electorate. Someday — probably on election day — the PCs will realize their manipulation skills are limited, and certainly not as vast as Premier Paul Davis thinks they are.
Cutting the number of politicians that sit in the House of Assembly seems like a win-win proposal. Suggest it, and you win, because of the public’s aversion to self-serving, overly pensioned professional politicians. Do it, and you win, because of the public’s … etc.
Except that, as Michael pointed out, how the House of Assembly seats are cut and how the districts are redrawn is every bit as important as how many seats there are.
Liberal Leader Dwight Ball — the province’s premier-in-waiting — doesn’t look very premierly these days.
Ball’s first mistake was to be suckered by Davis’s manipulative announcement that the PCs intend to cut the number of seats in time for the next general election.
Some advice for the future premier: put your mind in gear before pressing the gas pedal that is your tongue. A moment’s reflection would likely have convinced you that immediately agreeing with the premier — on almost anything — is not politically astute.
A bit of levity by Ball would have been wiser: “The premier wants to get rid of 10 seats. We say, call an election, and we’ll help his party get rid of 29.”
More seriously, the Liberals could have then said, “Why now, Mr. Premier. Your party has been in power for 11 ½ years, and this was never a priority, but now you want to force this change before an election and possibly postpone the election because of it.”
Think of the political mileage the Liberals could have gained from that phrase, “postpone the election.”
Just when you think the Tories’ arrogance and repugnance has reached its peak, and they can’t possibly come up with anything else to insult the intelligence and democratic decency of the public … they do.
But Ball initially let it all pass by without comment or condemnation.
In contrast, Michael immediately saw the manipulation at work, and pointed out an obvious flaw that neither Davis nor Ball thought worthy of notice: that cutting the number of seats in the House of Assembly should not be done without public consultation and public input.
To give the Liberals credit, they recovered their senses this week. Some backroom adviser probably deserves a small bonus for whispering, “Uh, Mr. Ball, sir, your job is to oppose the premier.”
People who like politics as spectacle weren’t disappointed this week, as bureaucrats and an unelected minister of justice withheld public documents from the Liberals.
Judy Manning’s explanation? There were too many documents — 20 boxes, to be exact — comprising the work of the 1993 electoral boundaries commission report.
In one aspect, at least, it is possible to agree with Davis: some seats do need to be gotten rid of. It is tempting to suggest he start with Manning’s, but, of course, she doesn’t have a seat.
Brian Jones is a desk editor at
The Telegram. He can be reached at [email protected].
