When Clarence Pettersen called on Greg Selinger to step down last fall, the Flin Flon MLA was betting that his boss would swiftly resign as premier.
It was no shot in the dark. By then a handful of other NDP MLAs had suggested the same, fearful that Selinger’s unpopularity would decimate their party the next election.
What happened next is something students of politics will still be talking about 100 years from now.
Selinger refused to budge. In a stunning show of defiance, he barred Pettersen and the five other dissidents from caucus meetings, effectively extracting them from the government decision-making process.
The surrealism of the situation was illustrated when Pettersen and his fellow dissenters showed up for the throne speech wearing different carnations than their NDP colleagues.
The reason? Since they weren’t at the caucus meetings, they didn’t know which carnations to order. They might as well have donned scarlet letters.
Things intensified at a public forum in Flin Flon late last year. Pettersen told assembled guests that Selinger had withheld from his caucus internal polling data showing the NDP was in serious trouble.
Pettersen was also critical of Selinger’s handling of the detested PST hike of 2013 (also supported by Pettersen) and repeatedly said the premier risked dragging down the NDP.
Pettersen took time as well to tout the $150-million-plus the NDP government has spent or pledged for the
Flin Flon constituency since the rookie MLA came into office in 2011.
That’s an impressive number of which Pettersen should be proud. But there is fault in his apparent assumption that any old premier – not just Selinger – will sign off on those kinds of dollars for this riding.
As Selinger’s predecessor, Gary Doer, demonstrated, not all premiers care that much about Flin Flon. When one looks back over the past 30 years, Selinger’s generosity to this constituency has been rather unprecedented.
So why risk losing Selinger? The answer seems to lie in Pettersen’s over-the-top fears about what a Progressive Conservative win would mean for Flin Flon and Manitoba as a whole.
Pettersen worries that the policies the NDP has implemented would be reversed by the PCs. Well, yes, some or many of them would be.
That’s just part of political life. New Democrats win and undo some of what the PCs did; PCs win and undo some of what the New Democrats did. It’s as familiar a cycle as wash, rinse, repeat.
Times change and tastes evolve. Just look at the federal political landscape. The last 31 years have seen a split between left and right, with the Liberals in power for 13 years and the Tories for 18 years.
This enduring right-left paradigm might frighten party hardliners like Pettersen, but if it didn’t serve a necessary function, voters would do away with it instead of insisting on its repetition.
That Pettersen felt the need to demand Selinger resign was surprising. That Selinger has survived this would-be caucus coup is historic.
What happens next is uncertain, but it’s difficult to see how it benefits the Flin Flon consistency.
