Resolving the NDP leadership crisis: Not just a matter for the party

Heading into a leadership contest, the NDP in Manitoba needs to ensure that the procedures followed are transparent, clearly understood, fair and credible.

Those four criteria need to be met because the party will be choosing both a leader and a premier.

If the party executive wishes to restore some semblance of unity, it must assure party members the contest will be fair, based on a level playing field among potential leadership rivals.

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If it wishes to assure the public that government will not grind to a halt, it must clarify rules about how the premier, other ministers, caucus members and political staff will combine their governing duties with their partisan roles.

Political parties in Manitoba are hybrid private-public organizations. Until well into the 20th century they were seen primarily as private associations of like-minded people dedicated to achieving particular political aims.

As such, there was little attempt by the state to regulate or support their activities. Gradually, they came to be seen also as public institutions serving democracy. This shift in perspective resulted over time in laws, regulations, subsidies and reporting requirements intended to direct and support their roles in the election, governing and opposition processes.

Both perspectives exist today. There is, however, a tension between seeing parties as private associations entitled to autonomy and seeing them as public institutions subject to laws. This tension helps us to appreciate the complications of finding a simple solution to the crisis over leadership of the NDP.

Dual roles

Greg Selinger performs in two leadership roles — as party leader of the NDP and as the political head of provincial government, expected to act in the interest of all Manitobans. These two roles are linked and overlap in practice.

Back in October, 2009, Selinger replaced Gary Doer as party leader by virtue of capturing 66 per cent of the votes of approximately 2,000 NDP delegates at a leadership convention. That victory placed him in the premier’s chair without having to face the voters.

Just under two years later in October, 2011, Selinger led his party to a record success in the provincial election winning the highest number of legislature seats, 37 of the 57, in the history of the party. In formal, constitutional terms, Manitobans did not vote directly to make him premier.

As leader of the party with a majority of seats in the legislature, Selinger was asked by the lieutenant governor to form a cabinet. Three years later he was facing open attacks from within his cabinet, caucus and the non-parliamentary wing of the party.

There are no formal mechanisms for the cabinet and the caucus to remove the leader of a governing party.

The selection and removal of an NDP leader is governed by the constitution of the party. The rules in the constitution are very general.

In normal times, they grant the 25-member provincial executive (on which the party leader serves) the authority to decide the timing and rules for a leadership contest, including how delegates to a leadership convention will be selected. The current circumstances can hardly be described as normal.

On Nov. 15, the provincial executive met, with the premier present, in order to resolve the leadership crisis and to limit further damage to the already tarnished image of the party and the government.

There are at least two members of the executive who have publicly called for the premier to resign. Given the sensitive nature of the negotiations the meeting had to be conducted behind closed doors.

After the meeting the president of the party informed the media that several actions that would be taken to resolve the present crisis and to prevent a recurrence of such damaging infighting.

The leadership question

The discussion here will focus on the leadership question.

Premier Selinger had indicated earlier that he would not be forced out; that there would be an opportunity for the party to review his leadership at the annual general meeting (AGM) scheduled for early March 2015, and that meanwhile he would continue to serve as premier taking care of government business.

If others wished to challenge him for the leadership they were invited to do so. He left it unclear whether he would step aside as premier if another candidate stood for leader of the party.

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Last Saturday the provincial executive reported that the leadership review scheduled for the AGM next March would become a leadership contest with a vote taking place on who should lead the party into the next election.

Apparently, because of the perception that the executive might be too close to the premier, it was agreed that a more representative committee would develop recommendations for how the leadership contest would be conducted.

If those recommendations were approved by the provincial executive they would be subject to further approval by the provincial council, a large body with over 150 members representing all parts of the province as well as several stakeholder groups.

This procedure departs from the party constitution which makes the provincial executive the final authority on all decisions related to leadership conventions. In announcing these actions, the party president and the premier emphasized that a temporary ceasefire in the party leadership battle would allow the government to get back to conducting public business.

5 questions to be addressed

There are at least five fundamental procedural questions that the party needs to address to meet the criteria that procedures be transparent, clearly understood, fair and credible:

• Who are all the members of the new committee developing the rules for the leadership contest? Keeping the names private might be intended to limit lobbying by supporters of different leadership contestants, but rank and file party members need to be assured that the committee is impartial and credible.
• In setting the rules for the contest, how will the committee handle the key issue of whether the premier and any other cabinet minister who enters the race will be required to resign from cabinet? Allowing them to stay in office creates the reality and the appearance of an unfair advantage over other potential candidates. It would also lead to criticisms that candidates are campaigning on the “public dime” (for example by making government announcements) and taking time away from their public duties. In the 2009 leadership race all the ministers who ran to replace Gary Doer took leave from their ministerial duties.
• Since there must at all times be a premier and cabinet in place, resignations would require the cabinet and perhaps the caucus to decide on an interim premier for a four-month period. If Selinger is made to step aside, he would tender his resignation to the lieutenant governor and could recommend a “caretaker” premier. The lieutenant governor is not obliged to accept the recommendation and would almost certainly ask how much support exists within cabinet and caucus for the replacement. It is a little know fact that when a premier resigns the whole cabinet must resign to allow a new premier to select his/her own team. This might be as simple as swearing in those cabinet ministers who do not become leadership candidates. However, these complications hardly create the image that government is operating normally.
• Will cabinet ministers, MLAs in caucus and political staff be allowed, even encouraged, to become involved in the leadership campaign of their choice and be assured that they will not pay a price for supporting internal party democracy? Political staff are particularly vulnerable because they are hired centrally, they report to the premier’s office and they have no job security.
• Once the leadership race is formally underway the party must inform Elections Manitoba and the provisions of the Elections Financing Act come into effect. Those provisions govern the raising and spending of money on leadership campaigns and require reporting on such matters. How will the party ensure that public funds provided to the party and its MLAs are not used for campaign purposes?

No doubt there are many other practical issues to be settled to ensure a credible leadership contest. The fact that parties are viewed as both private and public bodies, and in this case that the NDP is the governing party, greatly complicates the search for a simple solution to a extremely serious internal divisions over leadership.

Paul Thomas is professor emeritus in political studies at the University of Manitoba