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Mike W. Bryant
Staff columnist
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
If the next legislative assembly goes the way the chatter goes, MLAs will anoint Floyd Roland premier in the next month or two.
His coronation will mark the second time in four years an NWT premier has come to power without any help from the voters, whether they be in Roland's Inuvik Boot Lake or Weledeh, as in the case of our outgoing premier Joe Handley.
Like Handley in 2003, Roland has been acclaimed and will not face the voters. Also like Handley, he will enter the next term as a former finance minister, without a doubt the second most powerful position in our government.
If former finance ministers are the pre-ordained choice for the NWT premiership, why bother making them run for election at all?
When Handley became finance minister in 2000, the chatterers among us immediately sized him up as the heir apparent, just as we did when Roland became finance minister in 2003.
It's become so predictable, so banal, we might as well go back to the days when a federally-appointed commissioner called all the shots around here.
At least we wouldn't have to endure another pointless election, voting in our token representative only be swallowed up in the seething torrent of legislative assembly politics where all cabinet appointments are made in secret.
Some might say, well, if people really don't want Roland or didn't like Handley, why didn't someone run against them?
But who wants to put all the time and money into a campaign when it's already widely speculated that the incumbent is going to be made premier?
Of course, this also says a lot about the strength of these individuals. Again, too bad it's not up to you to put them there.
Last week, I suggested we take up former premier Stephen Kakfwi's view that the premier be elected directly by the people in a territory-wide vote following the MLA race.
There have been arguments suggesting that doing so would perpetually put Yellowknife in control, as it has half the population of the territory.
If that were so, how does it explain 18 years of Ethel Blondin-Andrew as our MP? How does it explain Dennis Bevington, her replacement?
Perhaps, in the interim, we should at least require our MLAs to publicly record their votes for premier and cabinet.
If city councillors here in Yellowknife must make their votes public every time they hire a new dogcatcher, it only seems fair our MLAs take a public stand on who they think should become premier.
At least we would know who they believe in, and who should form the government.
A government decided in secret is not a government of the people; it's an oligarchy of MLAs.
The decisions we make at the ballot box are kept secret out of a fear of what the government would do should they know how people voted. That fear is based on historical precedent.
The legislative assembly is the government. The only people they have to fear are each other.
- Mike W. Bryant is Assignment editor for Northern News Services