Election over, now the real work begins
THERE is nothing like a general election to reinvigorate people's interests in politics after they drifted away in disillusionment as the previous four years progressed.
THERE is nothing like a general election to reinvigorate people's interests in politics after they drifted away in disillusionment as the previous four years progressed.
It helps that finally people feel they are being listened to.
All of a sudden you were getting contacted through the post, with a door knock or at a hustings.
You are made to feel wanted and that your opinion counts.
With every election there is a feeling of change, of renewal and of hope that this States will be different.
And it is now up to the new members to find a way to ride that wave of goodwill and keep the public on board with their work – because there is a danger it will peak and crash very quickly.
There are plenty of signs that this will not be a popular States to be a part of.
There is the need to tackle the £30m. deficit, the need to repackage zero-10, external threats to Guernsey's industry, ever tighter public finances and driving through the new waste strategy, for example.
Promises made by candidates appear at odds or at least very difficult to deliver – support for new services such as pre-school education, opposition to raising taxes and cutting existing services, plus almost universal backing of island-wide voting.
Openness and transparency appeared on every campaign, yet the delivery of that will be one of those tests of the new Assembly.
Get that right and perhaps, just perhaps, it might take the public with it over the choppy waters ahead. No Assembly has managed to consistently deliver a message to the public – eventually it becomes about persuading the majority of the States to support your report, not islanders.
Speaking in plain English, not the language of policy makers and civil servants, could lend a hand.
But there is nothing like a bit of fire and colour to keep interest high.
The outgoing States suffered from being a bland affair in the debating chamber, coming alive only once in a while.
There is plenty of promise that an era of passionate debate is back, with plenty of strong characters among the new guard who are already showing in the chief minister manoeuvring that they are not afraid to show their hands.
Various suggestions were made through Twitter when I asked about public engagement.
Live streaming of States meetings, keeping government visible in schools, immediate results of votes on the web, and naturally the role of the traditional media came up.
How readily will those members who are online and have a direct link with the public stay there when the going gets tough?
There are other suggestions that were spoken about four years ago that never materialised – a monthly public question time of ministers and regular publicly-held Scrutiny hearings, for example.
Perhaps the first test will be whether the informal chief minister's husting is held in public this time.
