Sacc deputies should have got on with job

I see your point to a degree, both Mary Lowe and Peter Ferbrache attacked the existence of Sacc earlier this term saying, as I recall, it was unnecessary and those parts of its duties which were necessary could be undertaken by other committees.

It’s therefore surprising that you quoted Deputy Lowe as saying she would serve on any IWV working party which were to be set up but would not serve on the Sacc.

In my view, however, the quartet who resigned from Sacc are at least as deserving of censure, probably more so.

As one of your correspondents pointed out, they knew, when they became members of Sacc, that they were going to be charged with implementing the result of the referendum on island- wide voting.

If we accept the argument that Sacc doesn’t do very much then one has to suspect that the four deputies simply became members of it for extra money, and when they were actually required to do something –i.e. implement Option A – they stood down.

If however you are like me and don’t accept that argument, and think that Sacc is a necessary committee, which does a lot more than discharge results of referendums once every few hundred years, then the question is, why did the quartet resign from those other duties?

Surely if they felt incapable of supporting Option A sufficiently strongly to implement it, they could have set up, or sought approval from the States to set up, a sub committee tasked to do just that.

By resigning from Sacc altogether, however, it means that any deputy thinking of replacing them has to find time to undertake Sacc’s entire mandate, rather than concentrate on the sole task of implementing Option A.

In order to do that, they would probably have to relinquish their existing responsibilities on other committees, which would result in a sizeable re-shuffle of the Assembly which would, amongst other things, see the four who resigned from Sacc, three of whom either are or have been ministers/chairman of States committees, take positions on other committees in the Assembly.

Perhaps vacancies appearing on other committees is exactly what deputies de Sausmarez, Dorey, Le Clerc and Roffey want?

Peter Roffey rightly argued that to accept the St Pier/Ferbrache amendment to extend the political term would have been a betrayal of the referendum.

One of the reasons of course, rightly cited by Deputy Roffey, was that a number of people declined to vote for Option E on the grounds that it proposed to extend the term to six years, whereas none of the other options made mention of any change to the term.

So it affected the referendum result.

Could it not be similarly argued though that some who voted for Option A, whilst aware of the speculation that it was fine in theory but would be impractical and unmanageable, went ahead and voted for it anyway because they had faith in Peter Roffey and his team on Sacc to make it happen?

Deputies de Sausmarez, Dorey, Le Clerc and Roffey have provided one of the clearest and most brazen examples yet of deputies choosing to do as they please rather than what they are paid to do, which is to accept the directives of the electorate.

MATT WATERMAN,

Flat 2,

3 Burnt Lane,

St Peter Port,

GY1 1HL