Question: What do David Swann, Hosni Mubarak and Ed Stelmach all have in common?
Answer: They’re all unpopular and they all promise to leave … eventually.
Question: What is Alberta’s provincial bird?
Answer: The lame duck.
Real Answer: The great horned owl — but this isn’t that kind of blog and we’re not going to tell those kind of jokes! Anyway, the way things have been going in Alberta this week, plans must surely be afoot to make the lame duck the provincial bird soon.
A week ago, Premier Ed Stelmach threw up his hands and said he was quitting, but vowed to hang on as top political dog to the end of the next Legislative session. The theory here is he’s doing it to influence the replacement of his successor, so he can sandbag former finance minister Ted Morton, whose sin was to engineer a caucus revolt against the premier over just how horrible the next provincial budget needed to be.
For his part, Morton quit as finance minister too, two days later, the better to campaign for the premier’s job.
But what’s David Swann’s excuse?
Swann, the Calgary physician who has led the provincial Liberals for the past couple of years and failed utterly to take advantage of the continued pandemonium within the Conservative caucus and on its fringes, announced yesterday that he too is pulling the plug on his leadership.
This comes as little surprise, since, as noted in this space yesterday, the Liberals’ only answer to the fact the Tories were apparently about to melt through the floor of the Legislature was to manifest early signs of spontaneous combustion.
The premier and the Opposition leader had this in common: they both seemed like decent, thoughtful guys who didn’t have a clue in a carload about how to do their present jobs.
But unlike the premier, whose Conservative party has bazillions of dollars in its election slush fund, enough MLAs to survive a couple of more defections to the uber-right-wing Wildrose Alliance without imploding, and sufficient bench strength to put a second string on the ice if anyone else drops a stick, Swann’s Liberals are only about two faltering heart beats away from requiring the defibrillator!
With at least two more Liberal MLAs thinking about packing their bags to head over to the newly freshened up Alberta Party benches, the MLA for Calgary-Mountain View clearly needed to quit as Opposition leader and quit fast to save his wheezing party from a premature demise.
Lots of Albertans who for some reason have a lingering fondness for the perpetually faltering Liberals heaved a sigh of relief last night when the Globe and Mail and Global TV reported Swann had finally looked reality in the eye and decided to do something about it.
Alas, when he made the announcement yesterday morning, he said he too would be sticking around till the end of the Legislative session that’s scheduled to start February 22. One assumes he figured his rapidly diminishing eight (seven? six?) member caucus just couldn’t manage without the leadership for a few more weeks of a politician of his stature — which at six-foot-something is pretty impressive, if only in altitude.
Too bad Swann’s leadership skills are deficient and his Question Period debating style is worse.
With Swann hanging in as leader, the temptation of wavering Liberal MLAs to stick around will be slight, and any hope that the Liberal Opposition can take advantage of the disorder in Conservative ranks will be lost as the leader drones through painfully scripted questions that often have little to do with the key issue of the day.
No worries, though, the Wildrose Alliance, the New Democrats and the Alberta Party will ask lots of good questions and get most of the entertaining TV clips. To the undoubted relief of the Alberta Party and the NDP, Swann seems to have managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of redemption!
Swann’s announcement leaves the Alberta Legislature in the weird position of having a lame duck premier and a lame duck Opposition leader at the same time.
This will create plenty of opportunities for the leaders of the three other parties in the Legislature. The government party, meanwhile, probably has the history, numbers and talent to survive even this unhappy time.
But Swann’s decision to hang around until the end of the next Legislative session could be fatal to his Liberals. Already former supporters are writing obits for the party. At best, yesterday’s revelation does nothing to enhance the Liberals’ chances of a comeback.
Oh, and Alberta’s provincial fish is the bull trout.
This post also appears on David Climenhaga’s blog, Alberta Diary.
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