Secret ballot has led to mistrust
I DID not vote at the 2016 election for several reasons, probably the greatest of which was in protest at the fact that the last States had introduced a new machinery of government without changing the voting system to one which was compatible with it. The events of late April and early May have further convinced me that the polls are not the best place to make a difference.
How many of those now asking the very good question 'How can it be that someone who only came fourth in his district and failed to secure the majority of his peers' votes in any of the four elections held in the Assembly on 4 May has become Guernsey's most powerful ever politician?' are also asking 'Where was I when the SACC staged public debates on their proposals for the new machinery for government?' That was the electorate's best chance to stop the scenario which we now have.
There has been another noticeable change too. Even the well-ridiculed outgoing Assembly saw fit to hold the 2012 chief minister election by open ballot. In 2016, Gavin St Pier has been elected by dint of a single spoiled paper in a secret ballot.
It seems reasonable to assume, then, that either a deputy caved in to pressure, or one of the vote counters saw fit to deem a paper spoiled.
When I was at school, whenever a paper plane flying through classroom airspace was picked up on teacher's radar and his question 'Who threw that?' did not yield an answer, the whole class was punished. Similarly, until the identity of the weak link in the States is known, the whole Assembly, including the officials who counted the votes, will be viewed with a degree of mistrust and suspicion.
My conclusion is that the new Assembly has failed the simplest of accountability tests which even the previous States managed to pass.
And those members of the electorate who failed to attend the machinery of government presentations or lobby on the format of the 2016 election have done no better.
MATT WATERMAN,
Flat 2,
3, Burnt Lane,
St Peter Port,
GY1 1HL.
Editor's footnote: The States Assembly and Constitution Committee declined the offer to comment.
