Election night was just the beginning

On election night last week in Saskatchewan last week, Saskatchewan Party leader Elwin Hermanson emerged with a solid hold on the opposition benches of the legislature.

Not bad for a party which, on election night, was one day short of being two years old.

When premier Romanow declined to call the expected June election because of the continuing nurses’s strike, you may remember, I said in this column that “by waiting, Romanow has handed the advantage to the opposition.”

Events have proven me right.

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Back then we had not yet had the summer’s farm rallies and traffic tie-ups. We had not yet spent our vacations driving on our province’s mostly pitiful roads and highways.

Eastern Saskatchewan aside, we still had some optimism about the coming farming season.

And the opposition parties had not had, and would not have had, an extra two months to hammer away at the government’s record.

It’s a good thing we only had a 28-day campaign; another week, and the Romanow government could well have been history instead of in a minority position.

Speaking of which, the CBC came out of its election coverage with a big helping of egg on its face.

In the days leading up to the vote, the CBC appealed to the public to watch its election coverage with its up-to-date technology. That technology failed badly.

At 8:25 p.m. on election night, 25 minutes after the polls closed, the CBC declared a majority NDP government.

I was watching with a couple of other reporters, a cynical group at best, but we all said we didn’t think so.

Exactly an hour later, at 9:25 p.m., the CBC declared that the NDP had 30 seats, just a majority.

Within minutes, they had to take that back. The NDP had 29 seats, the Saskatchewan Party 26 and the Liberals three. So much for technology.

The Saskatchewan legislature will be a different place at the next sitting.

Hermanson has said his party will work with the government, as long as it does things like lower taxes and begin to fix the highways.

If it continues to govern as it has for the last eight years, Hermanson said, his party will be criticizing, not co-operating.

My prediction: There will be another Saskatchewan election in about two years; Hermanson will lead the Saskatchewan Party, Melenchuk will lead the Liberals, but Romanow will have handed over the reins of power to a yet-to-be named successor.