Seats on committees are normally elected by secret ballot, but States members agreed to a proposal from Mark Helyar to publish their votes in the three-way contest between Deputies Haley Camp, Andrew Niles and Gavin St Pier.
Deputy St Pier was bidding for an immediate return to the senior committee having resigned following his recent re-arrest on suspicion of misconduct in public office and an offence under the 1948 Reform Law, which he denies.
Deputy Helyar insisted that he did not lightly set aside the principles of the secret ballot, but he argued that the circumstances were exceptional enough to require the highest level of transparency as a one-off, and he asked members not to ‘hide behind a comfortable veil of secrecy’ on a decision which he felt was one of the most important the Assembly had faced.
‘For those members wishing to behave in secret, in this very serious set of reputational circumstances for our Bailiwick, this motion is a deliberate catch-22,’ said Deputy Helyar.
‘Members will have to show their cards and vote down this motion in public in order to then be able to elect in secret.’
P&R and Deputy St Pier had claimed that they each independently decided that he should resign in a 24-hour period after his re-arrest, but Deputy Helyar believed that he resigned because his colleagues on the committee had already decided he should.
Deputy Helyar was concerned that the Assembly could use a secret ballot to put Deputy St Pier back onto P&R immediately when the committee saw his position as untenable while police investigations continued.
‘That is not a neutral act. In substance, it is a vote against P&R’s own judgment about what is appropriate for its membership and for our Bailiwick,’ he said.
‘Given that circumstances have not changed, whether P&R then ask that member to resign again, and we end up back here next month in a ridiculous Kafkaesque closed loop, is anyone’s guess.’
Some deputies wondered if the proposal for open voting was motivated by suspicion that members of P&R would use a secret ballot to vote for their former vice-president’s immediate return, but each of them publicly declared support for the committee’s nominee, Deputy Niles.
States Assembly & Constitution Committee president Sarah Hansmann Rouxel acknowledged that good arguments had been put forward for open voting, but on balance she believed that the secret ballot provided safeguards which should not be given up.
‘Members may feel more exposed to pressure, lobbying or expectation once their vote is publicly attached to a candidate,’ she said.
‘There is also a practical human consequence. If a candidate is successfully elected, they may have to sit on a committee knowing which members did or did not support them. In some circumstances, that may not matter, but in others it could affect trust, working relationships or the perception of cohesion within a committee.’
Deputy Hansmann Rouxel said it was ‘a significant constitutional change to make in the middle of a live election’ and encouraged members who favoured open voting in committee elections to allow it to be examined thoroughly in due course.
Deputy Chris Blin argued that a one-off change would in time come to be seen as precedent for scrapping secret ballots generally, which he opposed.
Deputy Adrian Gabriel disagreed, believing that open voting could reasonably be introduced as a one-off, and saying that members needed to show the public that they were acting with complete transparency in exceptional circumstances.
Whether a precedent was set did not concern Deputy Lee Van Katwyk, who said he was happy to see open voting used at any time, and sceptical that publishing who voted for whom needed to affect working relationships in the future.
Deputy David Goy argued that open voting could help discourage factionalism, but Deputy Jayne Ozanne took the opposite view and suggested that factionalism may have played a part in the motion being brought to the States.
Deputy Andy Sloan, who criticised P&R’s handling of the political challenges sparked by Deputy St Pier’s re-arrest, described secret ballots as ‘a rubicon’ that the States should not cross.
Simon Vermeulen praised Deputy Helyar’s opening speech on the motion for open voting as one of the finest he had heard in the Assembly.
‘I like this motion so much that I’d vote for it twice if I could,’ said Deputy Vermeulen.
Yvonne Burford, who is tipped to become P&R’s new vice-president following Deputy St Pier’s departure, reminded the Assembly that one of its predecessors had experimented with open voting in committee elections before reintroducing secret ballots in the light of experience.
‘If this ballot is made open, it is highly likely that the vote tallies for individual candidates will be different to if it is a secret ballot,’ she said.
Deputy Burford said she was happy to show her own voting slip to other members, but did not believe that all members should be forced to disclose their votes.
Deputy Tina Bury recalled seeing some members exposed to ‘excessive pressure’ over some issues in the previous Assembly and she feared a repeat if secret ballots were scrapped.
In his closing speech, Deputy Helyar acknowledged that Deputy St Pier had been doing a good job in the role he once held, as treasury lead, and regretted that the States found itself in difficult circumstances surrounding his membership of the senior committee. But he felt so strongly about the need for open voting that he said he would not participate in the vote for a member of P&R if it was held by secret ballot.
‘Transparency is the process by which we demonstrate to each other and to the public that we are capable, in our position of extreme responsibility, of exercising sound judgment,’ he said.
‘This is about judgment, not just about transparency.
‘If this Assembly is going to gamble with the island’s reputation, the people of Guernsey are entitled to know who among us placed that bet.’
Deputy Helyar’s motion for open voting was carried by 21 votes to 17.
How they voted
...on Mark Helyar’s amendment for open voting:
Pour: Deputies Camp, Collins, Curgenven, Dorrity, Gabriel, Gollop, Goy, Helyar, Inder, Kay-Mouat, Kazantseva-Miller, Laine, Leadbeater, Malik, McKenna, Montague, Van Katwyk, Vermeulen and Williams, and Alderney Representatives Hill and Snowdon. 21
Contre: Deputies Blin, Burford, Bury, Cameron, Falla, Hansmann Rouxel, Humphreys, Le Brun, Matthews, Oswald, Ozanne, Parkinson, Rochester, Rylatt, Sloan, St Pier and Strachan. 17
Abstained: Deputies de Sausmarez and Niles. 2