I was horrified to read in your issue of 10 December that Sacc proposes to spend at least £200,000 on holding a by-election to fill the vacancy in the States created by the resignation of Jonathan Le Tocq.
Do they not realise that under our system of island-wide voting it is no longer necessary to hold by-elections at all? The poll in the general election last June produced the electorate’s verdict on the candidates, listed in rank order.
The top 38 candidates were declared duly elected as deputies. Now that a vacancy has occurred, the person who came thirty-ninth on the list should automatically be offered the vacant seat in the States. If he or she is no longer interested in serving in the States, the place should be offered to the next person on the runners-up list.
To argue that, six months on from the general election, it is more democratic to have a fresh election, invalidates the mandate of all the sitting deputies who will owe their place in the States to that poll until 2030. So please, let’s show a bit of common sense.
With the new deputy sworn in to the States as early as January, the civil servants will be spared a whole lot of time-consuming administration and the £200,000 spent on something that will actually benefit the people of Guernsey.
Island-wide voting may finally have demonstrated a really positive advantage.
Miss Margaret MacDonald
You need to be logged in to comment. If you had an account on our previous site, you can migrate your old account and comment profile to this site by visiting this page and entering the email address for your old account. We'll then send you an email with a link to follow to complete the process.