British Columbia's New Democrats have elected Moe Sihota, a former cabinet minister whose 15 years in politics were marked by several controversies, as president of the provincial Opposition party.

Sihota, who has been a TV journalist and radio pundit since leaving politics in 2001, was elected at a weekend NDP convention in Vancouver.

Sihota was first elected to the legislature as a New Democrat in 1986, and was seen as leader of a pack of NDP pit bulls relentlessly hammering the Social Credit government of Bill Vander Zalm.

After the NDP formed government in the 1990s, Sihota held the cabinet portfolios of education, environment and social development, but was either forced to resign or booted from cabinet three times in the span of a decade over various controversies.

He opted not to run again in 2001, when the NDP was decimated in an election that brought Gordon Campbell's Liberals to power.

Dennis Pilon, a political scientist at the University of Victoria, said Sihota's election as president isn't likely to signal any significant changes for the NDP, whose leader, Carole James, has unsuccessfully tried to position the party as a centrist alternative to the Liberals.

Pilon said that's precisely the problem for a party whose strategy to steal Liberal support hasn't worked.

"There's no change -- James is going to continue with the let's-try-to-cuddle-up-to-business approach, which has failed miserably," said Pilon.

"If I were writing the headlines, it would be: NDP decides losing strategy could be a winner. It always kills me that these people have dominated the party's direction for the past 30 years, it's never worked, but somehow they always get another chance."

Pilon says the NDP would be wise to instead look at what's behind the increasingly low voter turnout in the province, and whether the large number of people who stay home on election day could be potential NDP supporters if the party changed its direction.

The governing Liberals quickly jumped on Sihota's election as party president, sending out a news release titled "Moe of the same," which highlighted the controversies from his days in office while casting him as a relic from an NDP government whose popularity was battered when it was tossed from office.

Pilon said the decision to name Sihota as president will likely make little difference to the party's public image.

"That's pretty rich coming from these Liberals -- the premier has stumbled and fallen a few times, but he always seems to get a chance to get back up again," he said.

"The Liberals say the things that the NDP did in office were bad -- well, that's what we expect them to do."