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Mike W. Bryant
Staff columnist
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
Now that the silly season is upon us, it is time to dredge up an issue that isn't new but is rarely discussed by MLA candidates at election time.
I used to like the idea of consensus government, but I've soured on it now. I'm not the only one, but as an election issue it seems most MLA candidates view it as an automatic death sentence should they be foolish enough to raise it.
The NDP party, which traditionally does very well in the territory on a federal level, including Dennis Bevington's win last year as our MP, have run candidates on a territorial level before but all of them got creamed.
Maybe it's because the idea of consensus government seems so quaint, so unique, and now so entrenched, that to attack it, and suggest a move towards party politics is to come off as a southern imposter and not trustworthy to be given a seat in our government.
As Northerners, we pride ourselves in being different, which is what lends consensus government its charm in our eyes, but clouds our judgement of it, too.
The idea of consensus government is built on a garbled concept of traditional, aboriginal decision-making, but past aboriginal leaders never lorded over a territory so large and diverse as ours or endured under a British Westminster style of parliamentary politics, which is what our legislative assembly is.
But by taking that model and adding in the consensus government part, what we really have today is a dictatorship by the premier and cabinet.
Because there are only seven cabinet positions and one speaker's chair available to divvy up out of a 19-member legislative assembly, the government is in a constant minority situation and needs opposition support to pass legislation.
Yet because it's left to the MLAs to jockey among themselves to decide who will be on cabinet, the opposition MLAs are often ineffective.
The nature of the game requires that they be careful who they offend, or risk being shut out the next time a cabinet seat is open.
This doesn't resemble anything remotely close to an aboriginal concept of leadership as far as I can tell.
No one is sitting around a fire passing around a peace pipe and discussing the issues of the day; it's a bunch of guys wearing suits in a backroom making these decisions in secret.
Most people who watch politics already know this, yet it remains taboo to question consensus government at the best of times. As an election issue, it is out of reach.
Four years ago, outgoing Premier Stephen Kakfwi suggested it was time to allow the people to decide in a territory-wide vote who should become premier but he was completely ignored.
Here's my suggestion.
If we want to be so different from all the other democracies out there, why don't we carry on electing the MLAs without political party labels, and then hold a run-off election to decide which one of them becomes the premier. He or she then decides who gets to enter cabinet.
That way, we don't have to endure the MLAs preening over each other for cabinet posts, and we can turn to the popularly elected premier as the ultimate buck-stopper without diffusing the responsibility onto the legislative assembly as a whole.
Anyway, that's my thought. I wonder if any of our latest batch of MLA candidates have the guts to bring it up themselves.
- Mike W. Bryant is Assignment editor for Northern News Services