How much power should the public be given?

WHENEVER pockets of anger boil up in the States, there will be someone asking for the head of whichever politician is most associated with the decision that has caused the rancour.

While deputies can move votes of no confidence or apply pressure behind the scenes for resignations, the public are stuck shouting from the sidelines with very little chance of affecting that kind of change.

At the head of the 100-odd people strolling up the High Street on Sunday in protest of the two-school model was a banner proclaiming ‘St Pier and Fallaize Out!’ and labelling them enemies of Guernsey.

Deputies Gavin St Pier and Matt Fallaize are many different things, but enemies of the island is not one of them.

In the most extreme cases there have been those so disillusioned with this States that they want the whole lot of them gone and another election – usually with the cry of they are going against the will of ‘the people’.

To be frank, I’ve very little time for those who seem to think they speak for everyone, having yet to find any political issue that everyone can agree on.

The people really are a very disparate bunch when you get outside an echo chamber on your Facebook profile.

It’s the type of argument that deserves as much time as dismissing ideas simply as alt-right Nazism, or liberal left lunacy, or whatever buzzy phrase fits in the character limit of Twitter and can make a nice hashtag.

But what the banner on Sunday did start was a thought process on how much power should be given to the public when they genuinely do see things going awry.

And it’s important to remember here that the public’s view on these things may be very different looking in on States members who are already part of an exclusive closed-door club.

In July 2015, the States was locked in a debate about how to reorganise the system of government to have more efficient and accountable government.

Nearing the end of that, Deputy Laurie Queripel laid an amendment for an investigation into the right of recall – something that would force a deputy to resign their seat and trigger a by-election.

After outlining his case, including the vast variety of jurisdictions that have some recall mechanism, he was given short shrift.

The then chief minister, Jonathan Le Tocq, thought it should not be debated because it wasn’t relevant to the report before the Assembly at the time, then States Assembly and Constitution Committee president Matt Fallaize said it could not work with a consensus model.

He reasoned that those leading committees get most associated with unpopular decisions, even though they have only one equal vote and might also not agree with what the States has told their committee to do.

The debate was then abruptly ended with a guillotine motion.

The States is always caught in something of a bind when it comes to how to give the public a voice and keep them engaged in decision-making – and indeed how much it should listen anyway.

Are members elected to simply parrot public opinion, if indeed they can work it out, or to apply a bit more critical thinking and act according to what they think is in the best interests of the island?

In many respects, the island-wide voting debate is driven by those who want a louder voice, in this case to be able to vote to oust certain deputies that they do not like who are not currently in their district.

That Guernsey is holding a referendum is one step towards being more democratic, but the States has chosen a subject full of false promises and the negative vote is just one of them.

Of course States members do not like the right of recall and it is easy to see why.

If the mechanism was collecting a certain percentage of signatures from those on the electoral roll to trigger a recall ballot, then it is open to organised small groups to be rather disruptive.

It could become a bar to bold and socially progressive decision-making.

In the UK the right of recall is limited to when someone has been given a prison sentence of less than 12 months (they lose their seat if it is more than that anyway), suspended from the House or breached expenses rules.

The bar is very high, but at least there is a bar.

It is, though, far from giving the public a voice when they have lost confidence in their representatives, which is what those reacting most strongly at the moment to decision-making in Guernsey would want.

Given the turnout on Sunday, there may be discontent with the two-school model, but it is hardly boiling at a level where the majority of the public would want another election.

Could those who wrote that banner attacking deputies St Pier and Fallaize garner 10% of those on the electoral roll – so if it was island-wide, some 2,000 signatures – to effectively sack them?

And even if they mustered that, which is far from guaranteed, and those members stood again, would the opposition then get enough votes for an alternative candidate?

There was, and remains, some value in investigating the right of recall, but it would not necessarily do what people would expect.