The bleak assessment of the Council of Ministers by the Co-Operative Society’s chief operating officer, Mark Cox, comes nearly 100 days on from the General Election.
Speaking to the JEP as part of a week-long series of special reports, Mr Cox said: ‘To me, I’m surprised it’s 100 days already and I’m slightly underwhelmed.
‘From a government point of view, seeing the civil service charge ahead and appear to me progressive and operating in the fast lane, we seem to have States Members who are a bit missing in action and operating in the slow lane. It’s gone very, very
quiet.’
He added that the Chief Minister, Senator John Le Fondré, and his other ministerial colleagues had missed a once-in-a-parliament opportunity to tackle a range of difficult and, arguably, unpopular issues including firming up a population policy.
‘Sometimes when you’re new in a position you need to make difficult changes and capitalise on being able to blame the old regime to some degree,’ he said.
‘But we’re not seeing anybody looking at the difficult issues and saying, “This is what were going to do”.
‘We’ve got time now in these early months to make some of these arguably unpopular decisions and by the next election they’ll be forgotten.
‘I don’t see anybody doing that.’
When asked if he believed the Chief Minister had it in him to achieve that, he added: ‘I’m not so sure’.
