CATHY BENNETT: MYTH VS. REALITY + TOP TEN PICKS 2016

To start the New Year, it's always fun to look back on last year's work — if only to see what stories most attracted your interest. Below I have listed ten selections from 2016. Those choices are based entirely on the number of pageviews each claimed, according to the Google. There is just one caveat: I have not included stories posted during the past month, even though each attracted a large number of readers. I felt they were posted recently enough to be easily accessed.

My (admittedly incorrect) prediction that “Cathy Bennett’s Days in Finance are Numbered” (the Minister has outlasted reasonable constraints on the word "limited") garnered over 20,000 pageviews and the number one spot. Still, the post warrants further comment.

Finance is a key portfolio. And, for a long time, the Minister has been perceived by this blogger as a politician in a rather precarious — even tenuous — spot.

CATHY BENNETT’S DAYS IN FINANCE ARE NUMBERED

A new portfolio awaits Finance Minister Cathy Bennett — assuming she doesn’t quit first, or refuse a demotion. Liberal Party insiders report that Premier Ball’s next Cabinet shuffle will see a new face in the Government’s most important and prestigious Ministry.

Why is the writing on the wall for Bennett?

To begin with, the rules of politics are simply against her. But, in addition, Bennett has not demonstrated either the heft or the skilful art of politics essential to survival in a time of great crisis. Besides, in full public view, the Premier has told the Minster to take her fiscal plan and stuff it!

A weak and vacillating Premier has discovered he is unpopular. The rulebook demands that someone — other than the Premier — is blamed.  Giving the matter additional urgency is that a few people from inside the Caucus, and at least one from outside, want his job.

BUDGET CRISIS EXPOSES WEAK PREMIER

The new Liberal Government is taking a political shellacking. 

Ball is turning fiasco into a phenomenon. If he doesn’t use his own political instincts, assuming he has any, he won’t last as long as did Kathy Dunderdale.

Such a conclusion, little more than five months into his tenure, seems ridiculously premature. But it isn’t. That the Government’s first set of decisions were so strategically ill-chosen, suggests the Premier is quite prone to stumble.

It is not just the deficit levy or the doubling of the gas tax, though these measures are the predominant catalysts of dissension. His public relations capacity seems to mirror his own lack of fire; a relaxed and passion-less treatment of deeply felt political issues magnifies an incapacity to connect with a public jolted by their vastly changed financial circumstance.