Policy-based election system has benefits
I AGREE with Peter Roffey's description of the weaknesses in our present political system, intriguingly referred to as 'Consensus Government' (Roffey Writes, 27 February). But he presents an exaggeratedly negative picture of what he claims to be the only alternative – full blown, old-fashioned UK party politics. He then makes the unsubstantiated claim that there is very little appetite for it in the island. There is, however, ample evidence of a preference for island-wide voting. The work currently being undertaken on this by the States Assembly & Constitution Committee presents an opportunity to move towards a system of election where policies are more important than personalities. It is important that this opportunity is seized because island-wide voting will make it impractical for the voter to process a significantly increased volume of manifestos. Indeed as Roffey correctly points out, the manifestos we are required to read under our present system are all but meaningless.
Roffey is right about something else – it is not up to the public to make this change. It is up to those of his colleagues (and any new candidates) who wish to stand at the next general election to find like-minded individuals with whom to form a meaningful set of policies for us to vote on. But I expect that deputies in office are reluctant to propose changing a system by which they were elected in the first place. And I suspect that many of them would not much fancy the discipline of arriving at a consensus on policy matters with fellow candidates prior to an election. In any event, the present system does not really require such an approach.
But it is my hope, and I dare to believe my expectation, that with the introduction of island-wide voting this approach will be forced upon them. And it might also attract a new type of election candidate more willing to adopt a collaborative attitude towards solving the island's problems, instead of those whose candidacy is based on the premise that they are individually possessed of all the answers.
The Guernsey electorate will then, as in the greater part of the developed world, be able to vote in a set of policies formed from the majority view, allowing us to be governed in accordance with an agenda that the population played an active role in choosing. There are multiple examples of this working well elsewhere, without the wasted resources on opposition and wide swings in government policy that Roffey predicts. Indeed he acknowledges that governments are frequently formed from a coalition of policy agendas, an outcome that would suit us well.
Whatever flaws and pitfalls that Roffey and others can possibly dream up for such a policy-based system, it can only be an improvement on what we have at the moment, which leads to little in the way of true consensus and even less that can be called effective government.
NIGEL DE LA RUE,
Crosstrees, Ville Baudu,
Vale.
