A week in politics

Can a £330m development that we were promised could lead to a renaissance in Jersey’s architecture, provide a base for the finance industry that our competitors would envy, and deliver housing, public spaces and parking in the middle of town really be unpicked by a St Clement Deputy with a laptop?

Is it actually possible that Harcourt, WEB and the Council of Ministers – with all their millions of pounds worth of resources – can be outplayed, outmanoeuvred, and comprehensively found out by Deputy Gerard Baudains with a little help from www.google.com?

On the basis of the facts that have leaked, erupted and dripped out since the house of cards started to collapse ten days ago, the answer has to be an emphatic yes.

Which begs the question – how can it all be this fragile? How can this vast machinery be flipped onto its side so easily by one man exerting a little pressure in the right place?

We’ve been here before, of course, about four years ago, when Ted Vibert apparently brought the whole Island to the brink of disaster – according to his targets/victims/enemies – with the aid of a mobile phone and a website he updated once every three weeks.

But equally weird and implausible is the blank-faced innocence on the part of the developers, WEB and the politicians who have been on the receiving end of the most spectacular backlash of the year.

Chief Minister Frank Walker says we shouldn’t blame him, and that he was acting on the facts he was given.

Harcourt say the lawsuits in Las Vegas and Dublin can’t possibly affect the Waterfront project. WEB say that everything will be guaranteed by banks, so there’s no problem. And WEB chairman Gerald Voisin says his chairmanship of the local subsidiary of Harcourt’s financial backers has no bearing on the Waterfront.

All of them, to a man, completely miss the point.

Which is this – so why not just be open and honest about it?

If the lawsuits are not a big deal, and if they cannot affect anything over here, why didn’t Harcourt tell ministers about them when they were asked three weeks before the debate? Why not tell them during the debate? Why leave it until the whole thing had been agreed?

If WEB are so convinced that bank guarantees make the whole project ‘risk-free’ why not release the financial capacity report and risk assessment before the debate, rather than waiting until afterwards? Even someone who has as much trouble with numbers and figures as I do can see that they contain as many red lights as Hamburg’s Reeperbahn.

And if Mr Voisin’s ties to AIB aren’t a big deal, and don’t represent a conflict of interest, why was it left to the JEP to reveal them? Why were States Members not told about his role as chairman of the Jersey subsidiary when they appointed him, and why was it a complete shock and surprise to his WEB colleagues?

Which brings us back to Senator Walker, who at the time of writing faces threats of a vote of no confidence and a vote of censure, as well as the prospect of defending WEB against the moves to remove Mr Voisin and the States directors and going through the whole mess again in the rescindment debate?

The vote of no confidence probably won’t go through, the vote of censure might, and the best thing he could do with WEB is show them the door.

And the best thing he could do with Harcourt is think long and hard when asked whether their exclusivity deal, which runs out this month, should be renewed.

I cannot remember attending a single sitting this year without the States having to stop because they were inquorate.

At the sitting before last week’s, Greffier Michael de la Haye had to stop after the lunch adjournment, call all Members in, wait, and then take a roll call because there were still not enough of them in the Chamber.

To put this into perspective, there only has to be 27 Members in the House to be quorate and to deal with public business. That’s 27 out of 53. And it took them a good five minutes to manage even that.

I’ve got some sympathy for Deputy Gerard Baudains (yep, him again), who last Saturday complained about bullying and personal attacks used by ministers in the States.

And that’s strange in itself – because I’d mentally pigeonholed him in the useless-bigot-of-a-bygone-age category for his remarks during the January 2006 debate on the lowering the gay age of consent to 16.

For the record, those remarks included the following: ‘It does occur to me, Sir, that the way we are going it will soon be compulsory. What next? A minimum age for bestiality, I suppose’, and ‘My position is very simple: sodomy, whether between homosexuals or heterosexuals, is simply unacceptable and Government should not be condoning it.’

But the Deputy is right about changes to debating tactics, of course he is. However, it would be wrong to say that there aren’t a couple of Scrutiny panel chairmen using exactly the same tactics, and arguing with absolutely anything emanating from ministers’ mouths/desks.

And it’s not to say I’m not the only one who agrees with him.

If there’s any message to States Members I could pass on to round off the abysmal spectacle that was the Waterfront debate, it would be to quote these remarks that John Kennedy made to Amherst College, a month before his assassination in 1963:

‘The men who create power make an indispensable contribution to the nation’s greatness, but the men who question power make a contribution just as indispensable, especially when that questioning is disinterested, for they determine whether we use power or power uses us.’