Further to my discussion of Ralph Klein's victory in 1993, we can look at the other elections in which he was enthroned in the premier's seat.
Recall that in 1993 Klein's Conservative received only 45 percent of the vote.
His government, apart from 2001, never was very popular among most Albertans.
In 1997 his party received only 51 percent of the vote.
In 2001, it received 62 percent of the vote.
In 2004, his party received 47 percent of the vote.
In each of these elections, due to FPTP and the opportunity for pro-government gerrymandering, his party received 20 or so larger percentage of the seats than its vote portion. His party during his premiership held more than 60 per cent of the seats.
That is partly how the myth of his extreme popularity was born and allowed to continue.
The spreading of the myth is made very clear in Chris Nelson's Feb. 7, 2019 Calgary Herald piece "Ralph Bucks and the fine art of frittering away $1.4B".
He wrote:
... That’s the point today’s Klein revisionists rarely mention. Every single member of that 1993 legislature — Tory and Grit — was elected on a program of cuts, and when Klein’s government actually implemented them, he’d be returned to power with more seats: 63 in 1997 and a remarkable 74 in 2001. People voted for the program and then rewarded the man who delivered...."
Nelson does not look at the way the FPTP gave Klein government many more seats than it deserved and how it hid the fact that in two of his four elections Klein received less than half the vote. And do remember that the Alberta economy was booming in 2001, any government would have been popular under those conditions. The 2008 financial wallop was still seven years away.
Nelson's article is an example of how media concentration on the premier - and not on the bigger picture the sentiment of the general public obscures the political reality. And no I don't mean interviews on the street. I mean looking at facts revealed by scientific polling of the electorate - the elections.
The media does not pay enough mind to the reality of the politics. Did anyone mention that the NDP and Liberals together had more than 10 percent more votes than Klein's party in the 1993 election, or did reporters in general just interview pundits who looked at the seat count and pontificated on the evident popularity of the party?
Criticizing his behaviour in office is playing his game. We should put ourselves apart enough from the existing system to see it (consumerism - FPTP - more jobs through more attacks on nature - more and more wealth in a never-ceasing effort to amass more expensive toys) for what it is - a sham designed to feed the greed of the fat-cats and powers that be.
Instead of saying he is popular but made mistakes, we should look at how he was given such power when the voters never voted to give it to him.
The structural problems of the system need discussion- not just changing the personalities in office.
And that is why we should assert that an electoral system that does not give us proportionality of representation does not give us democracy.
Thanks for reading.
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