His proposal is a good one. The current process, whereby Members vote publicly on the Chief Minister’s selections, plus any other candidates, is at best highly susceptible to either block-voting or groupthink mentality, and at worst vulnerable to influence on the promise or threat of favours to be extended or denied.
That voting by secret ballot should also be extended to the chairmen of Scrutiny panels and key committees seems axiomatic. Arguably, it’s even more important. That a newly elected Minister can currently play a public role, with the factors in the paragraph above in play, in the election of the Member charged with scrutinising his performance in office and holding him to account on behalf of voters and taxpayers, is unsatisfactory.
Twice so far in 2017, the States have spurned the opportunity to make themselves democratically either more representative or more robust, or both.
They have ducked long-needed electoral reform, other than for proposals that do little to improve the direct accountability of the elected to their electors.
And they have refused to impose a term limit on the period of time for which a Chief Minister can continue to hold office.
These omissions would be bad enough in themselves, but there is now an additional, exacerbating factor.
They must be viewed against the backdrop of the justifiably scathing criticism heaped by the Independent Jersey Care Inquiry on the discredited ‘Jersey Way’: which in the political context manifests itself, inter alia, through a preference for the opaque backstairs stitch-up among the cartel of the self-anointed over any process that would be much less conducive to it.
In September, and for the third time this year, the States will again have the chance to reform themselves towards more democratically robust processes and thereby to back with some tangible actions the fine words uttered in the wake of the publication of the care inquiry’s report.
That chance should not, once again, go begging.
