New Premier of Alberta
The Swearing In of Danielle Smith
On October 6, Alberta's United Conservative Party (UCP) elected Danielle Smith as its new leader. She was sworn in as Alberta's 19th Premier on October 11. She does not have a seat in the legislature; the MLA for Brooks-Medicine Hat, Michaela Frey, has resigned, and Smith has announced that she will run for the seat in a by-election. Smith declined to run in the vacant seat in Calgary-Elbow, and announced there will not be a by-election in that riding which will remain without an MLA until the spring election, an indication that the UCP does not consider the riding a safe seat.
Smith replaces Jason Kenney who announced that he would resign last May after receiving only 51.4 per cent support in a leadership review. In making the announcement, Kenney stated, "While 51 per cent of the vote passes the constitutional threshold of a majority, it clearly is not adequate support to continue on as leader."
Danielle Smith was elected on the sixth ballot with 53.77 per cent of the vote, beating Kenney's preferred successor, former finance minister Travis Toews, who got 46.23 per cent. It is clear that Kenney's resignation and Smith's election have done nothing to create a "United Conservative Party."
There
were seven candidates in the race, including four former members of
Jason Kenney's cabinet, with Smith declared front-runner soon after she
announced her candidacy. The UCP reported that 84,593 votes were cast,
with 123,915 eligible to vote, for a turnout of 68 per cent. This
means that Smith was selected as Premier by about 1.6 per cent of
registered voters in Alberta, and was the first choice of less than
that. The crisis of legitimacy of not only the rule of the UCP in
Alberta but of the democratic institutions themselves that can bring a
premier to power on such a basis therefore deepens and, with the
inability of the democratic institutions to appear to be
representative, the constitutional crisis also deepens.
The Angus Reid Institute released a poll on September 30 in which Smith received the most negative assessment of the three front-runners, with 55 per cent of Albertans viewing Smith as "bad" or "terrible" for the province. Despite this, when elected Smith declared "the big Conservative family is all together in one room, united and strong." In fact, the dysfunction of the UCP, like the PCs before it, shows the crisis of the cartel party system and inability to sort out its contradictions.
No leader of the Progressive Conservatives, which governed Alberta for 44 years, or of the United Conservative Party, has left office willingly since Ralph Klein whose government acted as a proving ground for the anti-social offensive. With the exception of Jim Prentice, who was defeated by the NDP, all of the PC/UCP leaders since that time have been forced to resign by their own caucus or Party without completing one term in office after winning the provincial election.[1]
The ugly dog-fight for the leadership of the UCP has only deepened the crisis of legitimacy of the "democratic institutions" and Westminster system. The cartel party system exists to keep the people from exercising their right to govern themselves, and in no way does the polity accept that Smith has a mandate to rule over them.
Note
1. Progressive Conservative Premier Ralph Klein made it to his third term before he was forced to resign in 2006. Ed Stelmach "came up from behind" in a three-way race in which he was a distant third on the first ballot to become leader of the PCs. He was forced to resign when the oil and gas monopolies reacted with outrage to his timid changes to royalty rates. Stelmach was followed by Alison Redford, who won despite almost zero support from caucus, became premier October 7, 2011, won the 2012 election, and resigned March 23, 2014. She too was forced to resign, this time over various "scandals," chief of which was to think she could be premier without the backing of the "old boys club." She was followed by interim leader Dave Hancock, who served as Premier for six months, followed by Jim Prentice, who became Premier September 15, 2014 after resigning from the cabinet of Stephen Harper. He called an election held May 5, 2015 and was defeated by Rachel Notley's NDP, with the PCs reduced to ten seats, in third place behind Wildrose. Prentice resigned and later died in a plane crash. Then came Kenney, also forced to resign after receiving only 51 per cent support in a leadership review, insufficient for him to keep his caucus under control.
This article was published in
Volume 52 Number 27 - October 12, 2022
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmld2022/Articles/D520271.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca