Traits we should Watch very Carefully
Recent statements and actions by Premier Williams should make us all stand up and take note. You see the Premier alludes to his vision and no other is the right one and we are damn lucky to have it.
When he is responding to criticism of patronage with appointments for Dean MacDonald - Ken Marshall - Joan Cleary and many others to top posts in government agencies - he uses - I mentored them and employed them or knew them - therefore they have grown up to be successful.
When talking about himself he continually refers to the people getting a Premier for nothing and then adds he gives his money to charity. First of all we pay for our Premier - what he does with that pay is usually his own business - but in Williams case he tells us repeatedly he gives his salary to charity - then if questioned about the contributions - which he himself has made public - he slams those asking the questions. An act of charity does not require self-adulation nor public advertisement - it requires doing something for somebody else voluntarily.
When the Premier took on the Ruelokke matter - the law or process meant nothing as he decided there was only one right choice and that was his candidate Andy Wells. The fact that the appointment to the CNLOPB was a federal/provincial choice did not matter to him - and then he sold the idea to the masses by saying his choice was the only one who would protect Newfoundland and Labrador. It did not matter to him the cost (our tax dollars) to fight the issue - just that he and he alone has the good of the province at heart.
When questioned - and justly so - about contributing 15 million to a project headed up by his good friend - past business partner - chair of NLH and sitting on the Premier's Business Advisory Board - he just about lost it saying that this man did not have to head Hydro - he's doing it for nothing and if Newfoundlanders and Labradorians didn't want passionate people around government then so be it. He has threatened the removal of Dean MacDonald and even his own departure as Premier if he continues to be questioned.
His insistence that the Voisey's Bay deal is a bad one - despite the obvious progress of the project and his failure to point out the loopholes he speaks of - leads him to critisize the company regardless of the success to date of the project. He went on to predict the fact that CVRD - the Brazilian company has taken over INCO - would allow him to make the deal better. On the one hand his Ministers' of Natural Resources have praised the project in national circles while on the other they are reminded to say things like "we inherited a bad deal" when the need arises to fight the opposition.
His current fight with PM Harper on the new Atlantic Accord provisions respecting equalization is - one an opportunity to raise the "let's take on the feds" flag and - two a diversion from his own weak agreement that does not protect the deal against changes to the formula.
Danny is attempting to sell the people on "his people are the only good people" and those that oppose are doing so for other personal reasons and not for the reason that they may disagree or be uncomfortable with the answers to date.
His need for total power was demonstrated with the removal of Fabian Manning from caucus and Elizabeth Marshall from Cabinet. Let's look at this - Fabian in expressing a widely held view that the new crab management plan was not an idea that his constituents felt was a good one - was Fabian breaking caucus confidentiality. What about Trevor Taylor's stint on open-line wherein he read publicly a Cabinet Directive? The Beth Marshall event was even worse.
Do you remember the last election and the events leading up to it? For months Williams was harping on and on about the Auditor General's reports. First he spoke of Beth Marshall when she was Auditor General and the great work she did. She was a "star candidate" according to Williams - and he used her as a pillar of accountability and intelligence. I say used her because her star faded very quickly when she was not allowed to run her own Department without the Premier sticking his nose in. So there she sits on the backbench a Chartered Accountant - previous Auditor General - the one responsible for first questioning the Internal Economy Commission on spending practices only to be kicked out of the House of Assembly's books. Meanwhile - Loyola Sullivan - the current Minister of Finance - supported keeping Marshall out and voted for that. He also was the longest continuous sitting member of the IOC during the "bad period". If you look at the education credentials and past actions of these two individuals - who would you appoint to Finance as Minister? But you see those apparently are not the criteria the Premier uses for Cabinet - he uses instead an unquestioned loyalty to himself.
Then there's this whimsical promise routine where the Premier makes a promise to people such as the former mill workers in Stephenville - the people of Fortune - or the Northern Peninsula - and the Metis in Labrador - then with a blink of an eye - the promise is gone - regardless of the catastrophic damage in its wake. All the while he contends he is all over it.
Here's a quote from an interesting article in the Daily Times of Pakistan titled "Charisma and ethicality in a leader":
These studies led to the identification of a number of variables, the so-called unethical behavioural traits of a charismatic leader that may prove to be detrimental for the group.
Among others, they include a person’s use of his charismatic power for the promotion of his own personal vision rather than the collective vision; his criticism and rejection of all views opposed to his own; and his reliance on convenient moral standards rather than a strict, objective, ethical code of conduct. In a nutshell, his abandonment of organisational values and goals for the pursuit of limited personal values and goals.
The author Humair Hashmi is a professionally certified psychotherapist who teaches at Imperial College Lahore.
3 comments:
Face it Sue; Williams is not going to hire you on as a consultant, to shut you up like Grimes did at an annual wage of 90,000.00$ a year.
Now that has much to do about the subject. That changes whether these things are happening - or not.
By the way why do you put your $ sign behind the dollar value all the time. That is how it's done it Quebec right?
Maybe because I spent time in Quebec as well as every other province in this country along with a few foreign countries.
Quebecers also have a strange way of doing division but I never picked up on that one.
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