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Brad Wall and Kevin Doherty have surely seen angry mobs of civil servants like the one in front of the legislature Wednesday.

Twenty-six years ago, when the premier and finance minister and others were all young ministerial assistants, such rallies were common, protesting Premier Grant Devine’s ill-conceived Fair Share Saskatchewan program aimed at shipping out 1,500 Regina-based civil servants to rural communities.

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The lesson of those 1991 Fair Share Saskatchewan protests for Wall, Doherty et. al should have been that one must govern for more than one’s own political interests.

And to its credit, Wall’s Saskatchewan Party government has most often tried to do that.

Alas, it’s funny how a $1.2-billion deficit — or rather, the fear of losing your political hide — can skew your focus.

The issue here isn’t even so much that 3.5-per-cent salary cost reduction, but the partisan, self-interested way Wall and company have framed the needed austerity initiative to date.