Felix the Half A-G #nlpoli

If politicians are good at one thing, they are usually good at telling a story that serves their purpose even if it isn’t, strictly speaking, actually what happened.

Last week’s cabinet shuffle is a fine example of that. The story started on the day of the shuffle.  The story appears, in its entirety, in a great column by CBC’s David Cochrane.  He’s accurately repeated the story as Conservative politicians and staffers conveyed it to him. 

No one should doubt Cochrane got the story they told him absolutely correctly.

The thing is, the story Cochrane heard from the politicians isn’t what happened.

Here’s how you can tell.

Constable Contempt #nlpoli

Paul Davis fired Judy Manning from cabinet on Wednesday.

He didn’t meet with her in person.

Davis called her on the phone.

Short of sending her an e-mail or a text message,  Davis couldn’t have shown less class, tact, or respect for the job he holds and for Manning herself than in the miserable way Davis he fired her.

To make matters worse, Davis couldn’t even come up with a good reason for dumping Manning.  Take a look at three minutes from the post-shuffle scrum that CBC posted to its website.

David Cochrane asked a simple question.  Davis wandered all over the place and never gave a plain answer.  Even at the end of Davis’ answer to the second question, we aren’t really any further ahead in understand why Davis threw Manning under the bus and then backed over the body a few times for good measure

Judge Headroom #nlpoli

The Crown Prosecution Service lost an application last week to overturn a decision by a Provincial Court judge.

That’s not the newsworthy thing.  The Crown wins applications and loses them all the time.  What’s important about this is the back-story
.
The Telegram covered the decision itself, although you can read the whole decision for yourself. The Crown applied to the Supreme Court in Grand Bank to overturn a decision by Judge Harold Porter on a case in Clarenville on the grounds that Porter had presided over the case in Clarenville from his courtroom in Grand Bank by teleconference. 

The Crown wanted to force Porter to sit in Clarenville.  There’s been no judge there for the past six months ago since the judge there retired.  There’s a relatively light case load in Clarenville so Porter has been handling Clarenville.

And that’s where the rest of the story begins...

The Devil’s Snare #nlpoli

The latest eruption of  the Manning political controversy volcano is evidence of many things.  Not the least is that Premier Paul Davis and his team have a monumental problem in their organization.  It’s the one that steps in to manage political crises. Davis and his crew don’t have one.

So far, they’ve let Judy Manning wander in front of cameras,  call radio open line shows, and continue to do everything in her power to defend herself and justify her actions. She did all of that on Thursday, starting with VOCM’s Fred Hutton,  followed by a call to Open Line with Paddy Daly and finishing up with an interview on NTV. 

Manning gave reporters a couple of e-mails that showed she had, in fact, submitted a couple of draft decisions. Everything else has been a personal attack on her.  Manning even managed to get in a slam at James McLeod from the Telegram over a piece he did a while ago that showed Manning hadn’t finished her master’s program.

All that probably makes Manning feel really good.  It’s possible that the great minds at the Confederation Building think that Judy is doing the right thing. The Conservatives have got a record of handling political problems in this way.  The reality is that they are just making the whole thing worse.

Public Service and Bad Judgment #nlpoli

Shortly after she was appointed to cabinet,  Judy Manning told CBC that she was taking a significant cut in pay from her solo law practice to take the new job as an unelected minister.  “I'm doing this from a public service perspective,”  Manning said at the time.

That was part of her planned responses to questions about Paul Davis’ controversial decision to appoint an unelected minister and break the long-established political convention that unelected ministers seek a seat in the House at the earliest opportunity.

Manning portrayed herself as nobly taking on the job despite the financial hardship.  We should feel sorry for her, presumably, rather than question the arrogant fashion in which she and her boss were breaking the rules.

A couple of weeks later,  in another set of planned replies to questions, Manning blew that noble image to pieces.

Questions and Answers #nlpoli

Unelected cabinet minister Judy Manning was “surprised” that her personal relationship with Paul Davis’ political bagman came up in a recent CBC interview.

Surprised?

That’s an interesting choice of words.

Just like it is interesting for Manning to say that:

“Quite frankly, in terms of my predecessors, I don't recall the media ever approaching any of our previous cabinet ministers or our previous premiers about with whom they were sleeping.”

A complete unknown, with a relatively limited experience practicing law and no public profile at all suddenly turns up as an unelected attorney general, states emphatically that she will violate a fundamental constitutional convention, and then says she is surprised that people wonder who she is and where she came from.

She is surprised?

Pension Judy #nlpoli

Judy Manning will go down in history as the only unelected cabinet minister in Newfoundland and Labrador since the country gained responsible local government in 1855 who went into office with no intention of seeking a seat in the legislature unless and until she was ready to do so.

The Conservatives are deliberately breaching the centuries-old constitutional convention on cabinet ministers.  It’s spectacular, really, but the attitude that Premier Paul Davis and the Conservatives are displaying on this is hardly surprising.  They think they made the place and that nothing existed before them.  Therefore, they think they own the place.  Pride might go before a fall, but in the Conservative case, they are laying a carpet of breathtaking arrogance before them, as well.

Officially, Manning and Davis have said that she will run in the next general election, whenever that happens. We have a fixed election date, supposedly, so that election could be a year away.  Manning has said we don't know when the election will come and she’s right.  But while Manning has used that to suggest the election many come before next fall,  odds are equally good that it won't come much before the legal limit in October 2016.

So Manning could be working as a minister for upwards of two years without a seat in the House.  She’ll be paid as a minister,  meaning she will get the $54,072 set for cabinet ministers. The amount is small because it’s always been established as an amount on top of the base salary of a member of the House of Assembly.  She’s not getting that salary but, as the Telegram’s James McLeod tells us,  Judy will contribute to the pension plan for members of the House of Assembly.

Some of you might be wondering how that is possible.

Madness #nlpoli

The day after she took the oath of office,  Judy Manning, the province’s new attorney general and minister of public safety, and Premier Paul Davis, her boss,  are facing intense public criticism.

It’s hard to tell whether people are more upset by her evident, and admitted, lack of experience practicing law or the fact that neither she nor her boss are too fussed about getting her a seat in the House of Assembly any time soon.

Either one alone would be enough to call in question Davis’ fitness for the job.  The two combined are damning.  On top of that, you have to add in the completely unnecessary appointment of Keith Russell to cabinet. Then the day before, you have the latest twist in the Humber Valley Paving saga:  it’s really as rough a first couple of days as any politician has had.

There are so many things to discuss but to keep things manageable let’s down on the Manning Mess.