Many mysteries behind motives still remain

Opinion

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This article was published 04/11/2014 (3994 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

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It can safely be said nobody in the NDP universe has ever seen Greg Dewar as a finance minister.

That is no shot at Dewar, who has held his Selkirk seat for a remarkable 25 years. And who has served as a legislative secretary to the minister of finance, and become an opinion leader on finance matters in caucus, earning him the nickname “the fiscal hawk.”

But finance minister?

Dewar has been passed over for cabinet time and time again by both Gary Doer and Greg Selinger. In fact, Dewar only becomes a viable candidate for this important job when extraordinary circumstances come into play. And that’s exactly what happened when five cabinet ministers, including three of the most influential voices in the NDP government, willingly left their posts to protest a premier they say has lost the confidence of his party.

Still, it is unfair to paint Dewar as the only surprise in the new cabinet. Drew Caldwell, the Brandon MLA who was kicked out of cabinet for allowing excess in his private life to compromise his public life, is back in.

James Allum, formerly the education minister, is now justice minister. Allum is well-educated but does not have a law degree. That is not unprecedented, but it is unusual.

Allum joins two other rookies — Deanne Crothers and Melanie Wight — who are joining cabinet just three years after first entering politics.

Again, no slight to any of the newbies, but this is a hastily assembled coalition of the-willing-and-possibly-able called upon to replace five ministers who this week set fire to the NDP government plane while everyone was still on board.

At a Monday-morning news conference, former ministers Jennifer Howard (finance), Andrew Swan (justice), Erin Selby (health), Theresa Oswald (jobs and economy) and Stan Struthers (municipal government) tried to explain why they have taken extraordinary measures to battle Selinger for control of the party and government. In many ways, we are still no closer to understanding what happened.

The dissident ministers complained that under Selinger, the government was rudderless and incapable of acting on its agenda. This was demonstrated, the ministers said, by the botched manner in which Selinger decided to raise the PST by one point to fund infrastructure.

Beyond that, we have little idea what specific issues were at play. The ministers said there was conflict at the cabinet table, but they refused to discuss these issues citing cabinet confidentiality. “We can no longer work with a premier that refuses to hear us,” Howard told reporters.

The picture painted by the five ministers is, at face value, pretty naive.

First, it is not a political leader’s job to seek consensus. Ministers oversee specific functions of government and provide information and advice when requested. But over the annals of political history, decision-making authority has always rested with the first ministers, who are the leaders of their party.

It is, therefore, not unusual for ministers to complain about being cut out of decision-making. Former premiers such as Gary Filmon and Gary Doer were regularly disparaged by people in their own parties for having despotic tendencies and hoarding decision-making powers.

However, there were some big differences in how those premiers handled the dissidents in their ranks.

First, both Filmon and Doer enjoyed the support of the gross majority of their cabinets and caucuses. They kept their teams in check through a combination of persuasion and fear.

There were critics, and occasionally those critics went public. But it was almost always after they left politics and could no longer be disciplined.

Second, Filmon and Doer both had strong finance ministers who functioned as a check and balance to the enormous power of the premier’s office. Filmon had Clayton Manness and Eric Stefanson; Doer had Selinger to challenge his decisions.

Selinger has failed to live up to the model of power management established for him by his predecessors. He has not won and maintained the trust of his cabinet or his caucus. If you believe his critics, Selinger dismissed the opinions of his MLAs and ministers without doing any of the hard work to persuade or discourage dissent.

Most importantly, he failed to establish a relationship with a minister to serve as the check and balance on his leadership. It is worth noting both of the finance ministers to work with him as premier (Struthers and Howard) were among those who resigned.

Which brings us back to Dewar. He will undoubtedly be portrayed as a chump who was selected because Selinger can push him around.

However, perhaps it takes a man who served quietly on the backbenches, and who gave up on being named to cabinet years ago, and who is not driven by ambition, to help a beleaguered premier to see the folly of his ways.

dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca