On disgusting, egotistical, power trips and grabs

Bob Wakeham claims to have spent more than 30 years as a journalist somewhere. Perhaps that has been in a Somewhere that doesn't have a Parliamentary system, because some basic concepts still elude him. Today's installment:

Although played out on a more prominent stage, and with much more significant implications, this latest Andy act nevertheless reminds me of Roger the Dodger Grimes, weaving in and out of his responsibility to call an election after his nasty win at the Liberal leadership convention a couple of years back, glued to the premier's chair as a result of several hundred Liberal delegate votes. (It was his constitutional right to do so, as I'm told one blogger has argued, but it was a disgusting power trip nevertheless.)

The fact that he could legally delay calling a provincial election, a trip to the polls that would have allowed the entire province to have a say (and not just a handful of manipulative Liberal flunkies) in the formation of the government of the day was irrelevant. Every soul in the province, except Liberal cabinet ministers making a small fortune for banging their gums in the legislature, recognized Grimes' egotistical power grab was reprehensible.

No, Bob, "one blogger" didn't argue it. It's not arguable. It's constitutional fact, and has been for nearly twenty-six of the past "more than 30 years". Section 4 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, proclaimed in 1982, provides:

4. (1) No House of Commons and no legislative assembly shall continue for longer than five years from the date fixed for the return of the writs of a general election of its members.

Grimes had no "responsibility" to call an election until February, 2004. He didn't "delay", "legally", or otherwise, anything: in fact, categorically unlike most pallbearer governments federally and provincially — think Campbell 1993, Trudeau 1979, Smallwood 1971, Rae 1995, Cameron 1993 — he went to the polls in the fourth calendar year of his inherited mandate, not the fifth.

But go ahead, Bob, rail against the "disgusting power trip" and the "egotistical power grab" that exist only in your imagination and in the talking points that the PC planted callers used then, and in the intervening years, to distort the facts.

Go right ahead.

Ignore the fact that the past two Chief Electoral Officers have had known partisan histories, utterly unthinkable anywhere else in Canada, or probably, for that matter, in the modern Westminster universe; let alone the fact that the current office-holder's known partisan history is that of the party in power.

Ignore the fact that the current Premier is elected and, at least notionally, responsible to, the House of Assembly which he describes as "wasted time", and which has withered to the point where it is less active not only than the legislatures of most other provinces (and territories!), less than the maligned Senate, and less even than St. John's City Council. (By the way, that same Charter link above will tell you that a legislature has to have a session at least once a year. Any bets on how close to a year it'll get before the new session begins? The deadline is June 14th.)

Ignore the fact that Grimes, love him, hate him, or indifferent him, opened the Voisey's Bay deal up to debate in the legislature (Mommy, what's a "legislature"?) and released the legal text within days of its signature, while the current office-holder has made at least three resource deals — Hebron, White Rose extension, Menihek power sale — which are not only being kept away from the prying, nosey eyes of the democratically-elected legislature, but from everyone else's, too.

Ignore the Premier's selective intrusions into federal jursidiction, into the politics of other provinces, into the delegated fields of school boards and other delegated decision-making bodies, into the judicial branch of power; "selective" because he is more than happy to hide behind the Constitution or provincial delegating legislation when it is more politically palatable.

After thirty years — more than — you should be able to recognize "ego, unambiguous, unbridled megalomania", wherever you see it. And after more than thirty years, you'd think you'd see more than one clay idol, cast from the same mould, being erected, the better to crumble.

But ignore it all, even the "disgusting power trips" and the "egotistical power boosts", even if it makes you out to be a hypocrite, if not a willing shill, because you can ignore them as often and for as long as you want, as long as you keep blaming Roger Grimes, out of office now for going on five years, for all the ills of the world (or at least those of the province.)

After all, that's how the Eighth Floor does it.

So yes, Andy Wells' antics and ego and fondness of the bully-pulpit and crocodile-tear concern for the public purse are very reminiscent of a prominent, recent, provincial politician.

And a hint: unlike Roger Grimes, this one is still in office.