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Disgusted by the contemptuous behaviour of the parish deputies
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From Basil Lelliott.
I FEEL I must put pen to paper, to express my disgust at the contemptuous way that parish Deputies are attempting to reduce the only truly elected members of that Chamber.
I refer to the Island wide elected Senators. These 12 people have the support of the majority in the Island. Thus, they represent the feelings of all their fellow Islanders and, their votes are counted in the thousands, unlike the parish representatives who creep in with a couple of hundred parish votes then claim to represent the whole Island.
There have been, in one form or another, 12 Islandwide representatives in the States Chamber for hundreds of years, the title Senators being the latest. How dare those with the lowest number of votes in the States Chamber presume to have the right to get rid of those members that receive the highest number of votes from the people, who therefore have the greater authority to speak for the Island? This is a matter to be put to the people of the Island in the form of a referendum.
Most Islanders demand more Senators and fewer Deputies. In my personal opinion, there should be 24 Senators, 12 Deputies, and the Constables, elected to represent the Island. That would give Jersey a more democratic and a better balanced States Chamber.
Also I grow weary of the way certain States Members treat the general public with contempt. This attitude seems to me to have got worse in the last few years. It’s a case now of ‘We know best and you will do as we say or we will make a criminal of you. Only time we want to hear from you, the public, is at election time.’
As a family we went through the war in London being bombed every night. My dad served in Burma and did not get back to England until 1947, when we got back to Jersey. We didn’t even have a bed to sleep on for months. He, like hundreds of other Jersey men volunteered to fight for the Island and rid the world of those evil dictatorships that would have destroyed our way of life for their own ends.
It may be just my age, but I am afraid I can see, hiding behind the banner of democracy, a shadowy form of dictatorship that is slowly destroying our own history, culture, and freedom.
I have voted all my life and I am in my seventies, but I doubt if I will bother to vote again, unless I see decent, fair minded people standing for election who are willing to fight for us, the Islanders, and not for personal or spiteful reasons.
Imphal, Nomond Avenue,
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