'I have fulfilled my oath' - Jersey Evening Post

From Stuart Syvret.

I’M very reassured the Jersey Evening Post criticised my election campaign in its editorial comment (JEP, 14 Jun)…after all, what greater endorsement could an anti-corruption campaigner wish for, the JEP having always been the implacable mouthpiece of the local establishment?

Given the obvious purposes and agenda of the only newspaper in Jersey, it is hardly surprising that people, such as your correspondents Bob Le Sueur (JEP, 12 Jun) and Ted Vibert (JEP, 21 May), should be so poorly familiar with the facts.

Had events of the last three years, and the last twelve months in particular, been accurately reported, Mr Le Sueur would know that I decided to cause, and contest, this by-election, some months before certain other candidates knew that a by-election was going to occur.

If we had an effective Fourth Estate, Mr Le Sueur might also have been familiar with the fact that I am contesting the by-election not to rejoin a failed system of governance, but instead to begin the process of changing it, if that is the will of the public.

But should I not be successful on Wednesday, I shall take from the experience the irony of having been accused of pursuing a ‘vindictive’ agenda by the JEP. The same journal that prefers to condemn me – rather than those who have concealed child abuse for years and, in some cases, decades.

With such an attitude from the local media, it is hardly surprising that no States member before me has ever spoken out against the atrocities.

The JEP may prefer to side with over-paid and un-sackable senior civil servants. I prefer to side with those who have been betrayed by Jersey’s expensive public administration – for example, the survivors of the Blanche Pierre group-home atrocity.

Far from abandoning those constituents, I am the only States member – from among all States members of the last 30 years – to have unearthed and recognised the truth of what happened to those little children when they were in States of Jersey ‘care’.

And, in doing so, I have fulfilled my oath of office – in every moral sense.