Rapid change may have caught Saskatchewan Party off-guard

Whether the Saskatchewan Party is ready or not, change is coming quickly in 2018.

However, suspicions emerging out of its leadership race to replace Premier Brad Wall suggest it isn’t exactly embracing that change.

Of course, no political party would be especially happy about replacing a successful and charismatic leader. But, like it or not, it’s 2018 and the Sask. Party has to move past “Brad is the brand.” It’s time for rebranding.

The problem is, neither the policies presented by Wall’s five would-be replacements nor the actions of the de facto party leadership — those in the Sask. Party headquarters overseeing this leadership race — suggest an eagerness to move forward.

One understands the political danger in the Sask. Party now suggesting there was something wrong with the Wall brand and that there is now a desperate need to fix the Wall mistakes of the past decade. After all, leadership candidates are placing their political future on the province’s most fervent Wall worshippers.

That said, it was no small irony that the only two candidates who have come close to seriously addressing major problems in the Sask. Party government — Rob Clarke and Jeremy Harrison — were almost as quick to depart the race as they were to get in it. This seems rather unhealthy.

Nor will it be any coincidence that if Alanna Koch wins — still a big if, given what may be a growing backlash against her candidacy — it will largely be because she is the candidate most aligned with both the party hierarchy and the business support base that seem most resistant to any change from Wall’s direction.

The ballots have already gone out, yet the overwhelming feeling among Saskatchewan’s great unwashed is major issues like debt, the structural budget deficit and undue political influence affecting everything from the Global Transportation Hub (GTH) fiasco to spending and the economy really haven’t been aired.

What the rest of us are left with is the notion this party still subscribes to Wall’s wing-anda-prayer approach of all will be well when oil and other resources recover.

But if leadership candidates are having no easy time distancing themselves from the Wall government’s problems, the problem is as acute for party headquarters that now has the added unenviable task of having to remain impartial.

In fairness, such perceptions of impartiality are usually unfounded.

Unfortunately for the Sask. Party hierarchy (which would include Wall’s own executive council), it’s had an especially tough time shaking the notion that it’s cheering for the status quo, which means favouring Koch’s mostly-status-quo campaign.

It really started with the format for the leadership debates, which mostly favoured resisting anything resembling true debate in which candidates are either challenged by a moderator or each other. Coincidentally, such a format happened to also most benefit Koch — the candidate with the least experience in elected life and such debates.

That this was followed by at least three other camps (really, four, given Ken Cheveldayoff seemed to share this concern) registering a formal complaint that Koch had been aided and abetted by executive council by being tipped off to questions before the Weyburn debate, did little to dispel such concerns.

And now we are seeing another strange situation of candidates running “polling stations” with little or no concern and/or input from the party. While it can be argued this latest controversy is certainly nothing that especially benefits Koch, it can also be said it needed to be handled better.

At the very least, it seems to reinforce the notion that this is a party ill-prepared for the messiness that accompanies rapidly-coming change that will hit it hard in 24 days.

And the unintended consequences of all this is that it will only reinforce the growing disenchantment and suspicions emerging from this leadership race.

It’s never healthy to suppress change and all that accompanies it. It’s better to embrace it.