CKNW Editorial
for June 27, 2000

I want you to picture a ship going down. Having dumped their captain, the crew are all behind the new skipper except for the old skipper and one or two of his pals who are making nothing but trouble. The new captain has a plan – it’s no hell as a plan but it’s the best he can come up with. If, he says, every single person pulls their weight baling and rowing, they just could luck out and make shore. If any shirk their duty, however, the ship will sink. It’s catch 22 – if he keeps the mutinous ex skipper and his pals on board, the ship will sink for want of effort. If he dumps them overboard, the ship will sink for want of manpower. What the hell does he do?

He does the only thing he can. He dumps the ex captain and any who support him in the hope that just perhaps that will bring sufficient effort from the rest of the crew that something good might turn up.

No prizes for guessing that the star of that little allegory is Premier Ujjal Dosanjh.

The premier’s situation has gone from bad to terrible. After a bit of a blip in the polls after the leadership convention, the NDP have fallen down to a level where no seat is safe. And the trouble is so broad based that there seems to be nowhere Mr Dosanjh can start. Let me try to help.

It’s scarcely a secret that the focal point of the trouble is former Premier Glen Clark. Not only did he create most of the mess, he’s doing everything he can to torpedo what’s left of the craft. Before Mr Dosanjh can even see a tiny sliver of light he must deal with Mr Clark and it must – because Clark has left no alternative – be head-on.

The reason for this is pretty simple. If Mr Dosanjh is to give himself any chance for the miracle he needs he must have everybody baling and rowing. He can’t have MLAs – like Rick Kasper, for example - setting out on their own in an every man for himself mode.

How does he do this?

He starts by telling the public that they will not have to pay Mr Ward’s judgment against Mr Clark. There may have been a contractual arrangement by the government to pay Clark’s lawyer but that cannot, surely, extend to the damages and costs of the action. Mr Dosanjh may not feel good about doing this but I can tell him that as close as it gets to 100% of the public will feel just fine.

He then calls a caucus meeting and tells his MLAs that the decision is theirs. If they want to bring down the government and go to the people they should feel free to do so but that he intends to continue governing until he is brought down by a lack of confidence or he calls an election. And, assuming that Mr Clark and one or two of his allies might boycott such a meeting, he should put it to them in writing. And Mr Dosanjh should have no compunction whatever making this public.

But, you say, isn’t it bad to wash your dirty linen in public? Not if it already is public. Best then to get it washed as fast as you possibly can. The name of the game for Mr Dosanjh is survival, not winning. His mandate from his party is to save it … to see it have a decent number of seats after the next election so that it can re-build. None of the old rules apply here because this isn’t a matter of trying to get high and dry, it’s a matter of survival.

I can assure Mr Dosanjh that these actions carry with them no risk in that the situation is certain to be much worse if he does nothing. What Mr Dosanjh must have is complete loyalty of his caucus. That’s not to say that everyone must agree with him but it does mean that everyone has to be on the team.

Now this isn’t what I would like to see the Premier do. Though I have the highest regard for Mr Dosanjh as a person I would like to see an election and if it takes Glen Clark and some rebels to bring down the government, so be it. The NDP don’t deserve another chance. I’m simply making a political observation and it’s one I have no doubt the Premier has been carefully considering and that he doesn’t need my help.

What I can tell him and his senior ministers is that he and they are being made fools of by Glen Clark and his group of malcontents. And I can also tell Mr Dosanjh that long after the fudge-it budgets are forgotten, long after Bingogate and Casinogate are lost in the mists of time – the public of British Columbia will remember that this government used public moneys to bale Glen Clark out his legal difficulties both civil and criminal.

It must be tempting for Mr Dosanjh to think that if he can just get out of this legislative sitting and get a bit of breathing time he can right the ship. The reality of it is that Glen Clark will, one way or another, be in the news from now to election time. And while dealing with Mr Clark will not by any means end Mr Dosanjh’s troubles it will at least re-affirm him as a man of courage that the rest of his party ought to follow if there’s going to be any chance to keep the NDP as a viable political force.

He cannot expect his better mates to follow him if he cannot handle a noisy, mutinous, discredited former leader who is determined to thumb his nose at him at every turn. In politics the enemy is not always without – as former Premier Glen Clark continues to demonstrate. Premier Dosanjh has no alternative but to act and act decisively.