More Arrogance Than Action

In last Saturday's column, Mandryk writes about the current animosity in the legislature. Now to be fair, he does give a pretty solid assessment of the current state of affairs:

The source of this problem at the Saskatchewan legislature appears to be the perfect cross-section of arrogance and entitlement from each side. We're witnessing a daily orgy of self-proclaimed intellectual superiority that's accomplishing nothing other than a lot of bad Opposition scrutiny and a lot of bad governance.

I haven't really complained here too much about the NDP's lack of direction in opposition, but they do need to get their act together. Where are the questions about equalization? Where are the questions about Privatize Saskatchewan? Or the environment? Or housing? Or Station 20? Does anyone remember "patient of the day"? It's time for our Opposition to feed the government some of its own medicine.

As for the bad governance, well, I think I've made opinion pretty clear about that. It's as though the Saskies have no idea about what governing means. Even so far as day-to-day legislative procedure -- do they have any clue? Have they been involved in this process at all in the last four years? Are they going to grow up and stop acting like a bunch of 16-year-olds whose parents are out of town and have left the lock off the liquor cabinet? This is a party that existed only to seize government, and the evidence is plain: they knew how to run a campaign, but they don't know what to do now that they're in the big chairs.

But I do think Mandryk dropped the ball by suggesting only the NDP believes the voters got it wrong last fall.

Well I hate to break it to you, Murray, but the voters did get it wrong last fall. I think we saw pretty clearly that Saskatchewan voters wanted a change of government -- for whatever reason -- but they weren't entirely convinced that the Saskies deserved a majority. I had people ask me how minority governments work last fall -- people who ought to know better. So I don't think a lot of voters knew that you couldn't have a minority government in a two-party system, and with the Liberals pretty much a non-issue, that meant a Saskie majority.

If anything, this should point to the need for civics classes in every Saskatchewan high school, as well as public forums prior to elections that explain how government works. And with their apparent ignorance about governing, it would probably help to put the Saskie MLAs through these classes too.

Edit: Fixed formatting and a typo.