Referendum the ultimate weapon

The ultimate weapon of democracy is supposed to be the referendum. But look what has happened in the UK and Guernsey in the last couple of years.

For anyone who is not a supporter of Hitler’s goals and is familiar with the Red House Report, Brexit is a no-brainer. Even just looking at the evolution of the EU’s name should make it obvious enough what is going on. It’s gone from the European Coal and Steel Community to the Common Market to the European Economic Community to the European Community to the European Union, and there are even mutterings that a name change to the ‘United States of Europe’ is in the offing. It shouldn’t have escaped too many people’s notice (but it probably has) that the governments of EU countries have less law-making autonomy than individual states within the USA have.

Yet because the bureaucrats have bogged Brexit down by talking about divorce settlements and negotiated exits, arguments which never featured strongly (if at all) prior to the referendum, it looks as if there is a realistic possibility that there is either going to be a Brexit in name only or, via a second referendum, no Brexit at all. (If the public has been brainwashed into believing that leaving the EU is so difficult, what would they see to be gained from voting to leave for a second time?)

Meanwhile in Guernsey, the States’ decision based on the public’s clear desire to have island-wide voting has also become bogged down with arguments about ‘how to’. The leaflets explaining the referendum on the subject containing the five options as to how we elect our deputies have been delivered. Some of these options don’t even feature island-wide voting. Worse still, not a single one of these options gives the electorate an opportunity to have a direct say in who sits on the all-powerful five-strong central committee currently called Policy & Resources. And if there are five people on it, it means that an alliance of three holds the power. They will pick and choose who they listen to.

Not to mention the clause that the referendum will only be binding if a certain number of votes are cast.

The increasingly inattentive electorate of Guernsey made its own bed, which it is now about to be forced to lie in, when it failed to voice its opinion in large numbers (or anything resembling such) on the run-up to the Machinery of Government (i.e. the way in which government is structured, rather than elected) debate in the summer of 2015. The new system has clearly resulted, as many of us said it would, in an even more dictatorial central committee than we had before.

Any remaining inclination this extraordinarily weak Guernsey electorate has to oppose the democracy sidelining practices of the power wielding establishment is hardly helped by footnotes such as the one you ran at the end of one of the many letters you have published on the subject of speed limits. You stated that the public consultation on the speed limits proposals ‘ends on 13 August’. This is of course the proverbial ‘palpable tosh’. If the States want to tick a ‘we consulted with them’ box by launching a survey with a cut-off point which happens to keep their statistic spinning politicians and civil servants in beer for a few months then so be it. But it is not for the Guernsey Press, or the States of Guernsey, or anyone else to tell the people of Guernsey how and when they can lobby their government. Neither is it for anyone, other than the majority of those who employ those who make up the States, to effectively choose what subjects are debated by the States.

As long as we do so lawfully, we can communicate our views to our employees, i.e. deputies and civil servants, however we want, whenever we want, on whatever subject we want. There is nothing to stop, for example, any taxpayer or member of the electorate, having absorbed this disgraceful and pathetic list of referendum options, contacting the deputies tomorrow and instructing them to change the machinery of government so that all of the deputies have the same amount of power, which can only happen if, among other things, the deputies all have simultaneous access to information. It would be absurd of the electorate to adopt one of the five referendum options while allowing the current structure of the States to continue.

I’m not sure which of these two groups realises it least, but it is the job of those who make up the States to listen to and to obey the electorate. The former group struggles to carry out both of those elements of the job, especially the second one. And if the latter group reminded itself occasionally of what democracy is, it might keep itself better informed, be a darned sight more vigilant, and behave more responsibly.

MATT WATERMAN,

Flat 2,

3, Burnt Lane,

St Peter Port,

GY1 1HL.