My two cents appear below:
Danny Williams chose, from the very outset, to make this by-election about one thing - Him. He called the by-election almost as quickly as he possibly could. A nomination was held right away, with a writ drop immediately thereafter. From the get-go, the local candidate (an experienced and capable staffer to the former MHA and Minister) was neither willing nor able, or perhaps not permitted, to speak on his own behalf.
All communications would come from the Premier and his Ministers. Williams himself visited the district three times, and according to the Telegram no fewer than six of his cabinet ministers made the trek also.
To the rural hustings, from the daily morning dictates of his favourite friendly broadcaster, from the pulpits of academia, the high offices of executive authority, and the loyal recipients of government largesse came the Premier's clarion call:
Dollar figures would be thrown about - hundreds and thousands and millions of dollars worth of things that the province, the government, His government, He had given to them. It was even insinuated that the Liberal candidate, himself a one-time participant or recipient in some business development government program or another had crossed an ethical line by running against him. How dare he?Look what I have done for you.
And things began to look sour. Turns out not everyone in Flowers Cove (or for that matter Lewisporte) likes the idea of driving their Maserati or Winnebego down the highway for basic medical services. Who knew?
So again, the Premier chose to do what he always chooses to do. Make the campaign, as every political campaign and discussion in the province has to be, about him. The cuts would be reversed. After all, the vacancy of the seat, and the resulting by-election gave him a chance to see and to hear what he would not or could not see or hear when he had a prominent member of his own caucus and cabinet representing the place. The cuts were Trevor Taylor's fault. When that didn't work, it was the Health board's fault. It was the bureaucrats' fault. Paul Oram (another of the Premier's "quitters") was promptly thrown under the bus, and the cuts became Paul Oram's fault. When newly minted Health Minister Jerome Kennedy let slip that they were caucus's fault, or cabinet's fault, the message was clear -no matter whose fault it may have been, there was now "new information" available which would allow the wise and all-knowing Premier to ultimately reverse the decision to cut basic medical services from Flower's Cove.
And with that, the Premier again, went back to his comfort zone - he, himself declared, with ninety nine per cent certainty, that those cuts would be reversed. Leaving open the "one per cent chance" that the cuts would stand was by no means a threat to the fine people of... of... of... "the district with St. Anthony in it."
But lo and behold, the people failed to rally in the streets and throw confetti upon the Premier's return. Maybe, just maybe, the Premier's "one per cent chance" was mistakenly interpreted as a threat against their voting intentions, and so the 99% chance became 100% certainty with an announcement from Our Dear Health Minister, who was subsequently dispatched to offer similar certainty to the people of Lewisporte.
The Premier again took to the airwaves to remind the people of the Straits and White Bay North that the health clinic would stay in Flower's Cove even if they did not vote PC. That, of course, was not a threat, not even a subtle reminder of one. Nor are the comments surfacing today about the ignorance and ingratitude of those folks in the "smaller communities". They aren't threats. Not at all.
Meanwhile, the non-biased unfiltered accounts of the academics and pollsters were being peddled around the province, replicated on call-in shows and comment boards.
And so on.The Premier enjoys 80 per cent support.
Who ya gonna vote for? Lorraine Michael or Yvonne Jones? C'mon.
This government is bigger than the Beatles, who were, in their day, bigger than Jesus.
Don't ya want to be on the 'government side'.
And in certain respects, the whole of the media played along. They covered the Leaders' appearances. They editorialized (quite rightly) on the appearance of cabinet ministers in the district. But they barely ever mentioned the candidates whose names were actually on the ballot. The ones who were allowed to speak, and the one who would not or could not. Odd, considering that these were the only names on the ballot in the Straits and White Bay North, and there was nothing more at stake than which of the three candidates would fill that seat. But the Premier needed it to be about more than that. It had to be about Him.
In a way, I'm thankful the provincial media was willing to supply him the rope.
In the dying days, the Premier made one last gasp attempt to make the by-election not only about Him, but about His next great phony war. This wasn't about Marshall Dean vs. Rick Pelley. This was about our conquering hero against Hydro Quebec and Shawn Graham. It wasn't about Roddickton or Griquet, but about Fredericton and Quebec City. And the great personal battles that He would shoulder for Them.
Proud, Strong and Determined now rings as Tiresome, Phony and Desperate.
Maybe, just maybe, in The End, the Premier who insisted on making this, like everything else, all about Him, got just what he wanted. The voters in the district passed judgment on Him, not his spending in the district, maybe not even his health policies, but on the way He carries himself as a leader. They reminded Him, in their own way, that this was actually about Them.
Or maybe they just chose the better local candidate.
We'll never really know as long as every campaign in the province has to be all about Him.
1 comments:
"Maybe, just maybe, in The End, the Premier who insisted on making this, like everything else, all about Him, got just what he wanted."
You know, as strange as that sentence may be, I think you're right. It takes a strange logic to understand what we witnessed because what we witnessed was so strange.
As I tried to say in an earlier post, there has been something oddly self-destructive about the way this regime has been governing. This self-destructive pattern may have been there from day one, but it's become much more prominent over the past six months.
It reminds me of Clintonism, without the charm. You know that you're witnessing the nadir (or zenith, depending on your perspective) of a politician's narcissism when he invents his own crisis so that he can star in his own drama.
Perhaps I shouldn't have said that the media are complicit, because they don't have much of a choice, given the state of the polity. But yesterday's byelection shows that the collective bipolar -- the miasma of polls and paeans to popularity -- may have snapped. What it gets replaced with is anyone's guess. As Hamlet said, "The play's the thing."
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