Dr. Anton Oleinik is a former professor at Memorial University (https://antonoleinik.ca/dr.-anton-oleinik). His areas of expertise include political sociology and political economy.
When a party or political leader stays in power for a long time in a system with regularly held elections, it may be due either to their exceptional performance in office or to “management entrenchment.” Entrenched managers make themselves look indispensable and irreplaceable to the shareholder or the voter who initially “hired” them. Using power to stay in office for as long as possible facilitates management entrenchment.
Entrenched managers will not go on their own even when their performance ceases to satisfy the voters. To let entrenched managers go, the voters must regain control. Protest voting is one of the available options.
The craft of management entrenchment
The longer one’s term in office, the more chances the incumbent has to learn the craft of management entrenchment. One does not have to be a prodigy. It is a question of opportunities to learn tricks for staying in power.
Russia’s President Putin is a case in point. He has been controlling the reins of power in that country for over 25 years, since March 2000. The longer he stays in power, the bolder and more arrogant his acts become. He has no rival in playing power games within Russia and very few globally. Deeply entrenched in power, he looks at the other leaders elected for shorter terms upside down, like a Grandmaster at the aspiring masters in chess.
The NL Liberals have been staying in power since they won the election in November 2015. Does their 10-year term in office result from exceptional performance, or does it have more to do with management entrenchment?
The Liberals’ achievements during their 10-year term in office
The list of the Liberals’ achievements is neither long nor impressive. It contains mostly uncompleted projects.
A new hospital at Kenmount Crossing is one of them. No perceptible progress has been made on the ground since the government announced the start of the project one year ago.
The Team Gushue Highway extension has been in the works since 2018. It is not expected be completed before the end of 2026 at best.
The Liberals’ attempts to reform Memorial by micromanaging this formally independent institution have not been a tangible success either. The Premier and several ministers regularly met with Memorial’s previous President and the former Board Chair, discussing the university’s day-to-day operation after the scandal with false claims of indigenous identity made by Memorial’s former President. Memorial’s President subsequently left office amid accusations of a conflict of interest in hiring. The Board Chair also resigned after being criticized for forwarding a student’s pro-Palestinian email to her father. The departure of the administrators, both of whom were appointed through close consultations with the government, did not shelter the university from a new scandal. A report outlining a roadmap for the Province’s public schools and post-secondary institutions, prepared by two Memorial’s professors on the government’s behalf, cites sources that do not exist.
New Energy Partnerships with Québec in Labrador are another example of big projects whose status and true scope remain obscure. Mr. Michael Wilson, a former member of the Independent Churchill River Oversight Panel established by the Liberal government, believes that “given the volume of inaccurate and incomplete information provided to date, the public is confused and lacks a sufficient understanding of” those projects.
The public does not appear to be aware that Québec’s interests in Labrador extend far beyond hydropower. The neighbours also show a keen interest in the deposits of rare metals in the Labrador Trough. The Liberal government’s account of a meeting at which rare metals were discussed, as acknowledged by the Québec leader, avoids the topic altogether. Rare metals were not mentioned during the January 2025 debates on energy partnerships. The House of Assembly controlled by the Liberals did not give their government a mandate to discuss rare metals.
The lack of proven achievement likely explains the Liberals’ heavy emphasis on promises in the election campaign. Focusing on its track record of serving the voters would have been more natural for a party that has stayed in office for ten years.
Symptoms of management entrenchment
The list of symptoms of the Liberals’ management entrenchment is longer. Restricting access to information is a key condition for creating the appearance of being indispensable and irreplaceable. Entrenched managers have an interest in ensuring that the public receives information that supports this image only. The Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act, also known as ATIPPA, must have been reviewed and amended five years ago. The current Premier, who previously served as the Minister responsible for the ATIPPA, timely initiated the review and then put everything on hold, apparently dissatisfied with some recommendations received from the 2020 ATIPPA review committee.
The situation surrounding the appointment of a new Information and Privacy Commissioner in December 2024 further confirms the importance of controlling information as a cornerstone of management entrenchment. The Liberal government made a political appointment without consulting with the other parties, as required by the ATIPPA.
In line with its apparent commitment to non-transparency, the Liberal government refused to establish a Police Oversight Board that would be independent of police, civilian-led, politically neutral, and representative of the Province’s diverse communities, as a measure to counter rising crime. Public oversight is the least entrenched management needs.
The Liberal government established contacts with the judicial branch. Several off-record meetings between the government and the judiciary took place.
The current Premier met with the Chief Justice in March-April 2022. The Chief Justice was “advocating on behalf of the judiciary.” The Government initially didn’t respond to a request for access to records about this meeting. The overdue response did not contain any record of the meeting. The Information and Privacy Commissioner concluded that there is no proof of the existence of a written record.
The current Premier’s representative met with the Chief Justice again in December 2023 – January 2024 to accommodate his request to allocate additional resources to the Supreme Court. The Chief Justice expressed concerns for judicial safety in the light of “close calls locally and incidents happening in other jurisdictions,” although no particulars were cited.
Regardless of what is discussed at such meetings, the quasi-constitutional principle of the separation of powers is at stake. The separation of powers helps hold entrenched management accountable.
Williams’s ABC
Protest voting is not something new in Newfoundland and Labrador. In 2008, it was none other than Danny Williams, the then-Premier, who encouraged the public to cast votes for “Anyone But Conservatives,” or ABC. In Williams’ view, the federal Conservative Party broke its promise to uphold the Atlantic Accord. The Atlantic Accord allowed the Province to retain all of its offshore oil and gas revenues, excluding them from equalization payments.
Williams’s ABC strategy did work. Until recently, the Conservative Party had no more than one seat in seven federal electoral districts. Only this year did the federal Conservatives increase their representation to three seats.
Voting for “Anyone But Liberals” may also be a workable strategy. The ABL approach could help counter the drift into managerial entrenchment.
“Smart” protest voting
Williams did not go into detail calling for ABC voting. The Russian opposition leaders, facing a more formidable counterpart, made a step further. They proposed a more elaborate strategy for reducing the ruling party’s chances, which they called “Smart Voting.” The key idea is to vote for a non-ruling party’s candidate with the highest chances to win in a riding.
The strategy was quite a success in 2018-2021, before Putin started to poison Alexey Navalny, the Russian opposition leader, in addition to charging him with criminal offences. At the end of the day, Navalny died from poisoning while in prison. His death confirmed that the entrenched managers considered “smart voting” as a real challenge.
Adapted to local political realities, the ABL strategy entails voting for a PC, NDP, or independent candidate with the highest level of support in a riding. This year, three MHAs, two of whom are current and one former, ran as independents.
To succeed, “smart” protest voting requires coordination and the availability of some information about the other voters’ intentions.
A pact between the opposition parties would greatly facilitate protest voting. The NDP does not nominate a candidate in a riding where a PC candidate is popular and vice versa. In order for this approach to work, the pact must be concluded well ahead of the elections. The list of official candidates is now finalized.
Surveys may potentially be of significant assistance. The only poll whose results were publicly released can hardly help the voter assess the chances of the contenders, however. To begin with, the sample size does not allow for any meaningful breakdown. It was conducted “over an unusually long period,” supposedly because of “the NL wildfires.” Extending the timeframe of the survey benefited the incumbents since they regularly appeared before the media. As the assumption of managerial entrenchment predicts, the issue of the lack of preparedness for wildfires has been carefully avoided. The scope and impact of the 2025 wildfires could have been quite different if the Liberal government had done a proper job of preparing for this regularly occurring hazard. Notwithstanding the benefits of the extra media coverage, the reported level of provincial government satisfaction was slightly down in August compared with May.
As an alternative, the voter can turn their attention to signage in the neighbourhood or learn about the intentions of other voters by talking to friends, relatives, and acquaintances. Both choices have some drawbacks. Not everyone makes their voting intentions explicit. On the one hand, some people decide at the last minute. On the other hand, there may be a social “stigma” associated with voting for a specific party in a particular neighbourhood. As to the reliance on word of mouth, the interlocutors will likely be similarly minded people. Under this scenario, the resulting picture will be distorted.
Entrenched managers’ last resort
Facing the prospects of ABL voting, entrenched managers may strike back. They can attempt to rig the election.
Having a rigged election in a developed democracy sounds odd. The contested 2021 election in the St. John’s East – Quidi Vidi district calls for prudence when assessing what is possible and what is not. A Liberal candidate won the election by a narrow margin. The NDP incumbent challenged the results on the grounds of multiple irregularities in the organization of the voting process. After spending five years in the Court, the parties settled. The Liberal MHA resigned, but no byelection was held. The settlement prevented the public from learning whether the alleged irregularities were indeed serious and, if so, whether the Liberals’ majority government was tainted from the very beginning.
Keeping a record of all apparent irregularities during the election will reduce the likelihood of similar incidents occurring again. As an example, the Election Act requires that all advertisements and signage shall “bear upon [their] face the name and address of its printer and the person who authorized it.” No campaign signage meets this requirement. Instead of bearing the name and address of the Agent of the campaign, they say “Authorized by the Official agent for” the candidate.
The Chief Electoral Officer does not see a problem here, as his office can verify the source of funding. The voter cannot even attempt to keep track of campaign finances in the circumstances. To do so, more information about the candidates’ official agents must be provided. As it stands, the voter has no choice but to trust that the Chief Electoral Officer will do his job properly. It may well be the case. The St. John’s East – Quidi Vidi controversy directly involved the Chief Electoral Officer, however.