From Cliff Le Clercq.
I COME from a long line of proud Jerseymen and used to feel a deep sense of com-munity and belonging, which is rapidly diluting along with a dangerous loss of personal freedom being eroded by those who crave the drugs of power and money.

With Jersey’s spending habits, we are dependent on finance. This is now being resented, largely due to bad political PR and communication. If the man in the street could be convinced that he is gaining, and that finance can be managed at a sustainable level and is not simply run by an elite with no social conscience doing deals behind closed doors, how much easier for those who run the Island it might be.

The gap between rich and poor is getting disturbingly wider. The deep rumblings of unrest are being felt by those with a modicum of awareness. Clearly there are those among us who would fill the place with high-rise offices until we were like Hong Kong, with our quality of life at zero.

We are as a community losing total faith in our leaders and sleepwalking into social disaster. The list of diabolical political calamities is going off the scale, and everyone I talk with seems to feel dismayed and helpless, as though it were inevitable that government will continue to be inept or corrupt as we are bludgeoned daily by yet another report, an overspend here, a lame excuse there. A sense of hopelessness sets in. Our perspective gets lost and we shrug and begin to accept the unacceptable.

Just think what it really means to have a politician say: ‘I don’t care if a hundred thousand people vote against GST – we are going to do it.’ There is no such vehemence on public spending and getting value for money. Then there is another politician who is responsible for the environment yet single-handedly overrides the planning committee to give permission to another States Member (yes, another States Member!) to build another floor higher at his commercial property on our beloved Five Mile Road. Is that even legal? And yet another who thought it would be OK to allow developers to dig up other people’s properties to lay drains across them.

The dismaying list is endless. This is not democracy. This is dictatorship, and we must resist it at all costs. The old committee system was seen to be cumbersome and slow to respond to the rigours of modern life, but at least it provided prudence. We have been sold a Council of Ministers who govern in secrecy when it suits them and see us as something to be managed rather than represented.

These ministers have now clearly shown that it is a failed experiment in governing which doesn’t work for us, the people. How dare they treat us this way? Could it be because they have evidence to support the idea that we will stand for it?

There are some good people in the States who work hard, but there are not enough of them. It is the system itself which is flawed. We have always focused on personalities rather than principles, and have thought that the problem was with the men and women who rule, and not with the system that sustains them, so we merely replace one despot with another, hoping somehow that the new one will be more wise and benevolent. Even if the new rulers have good intentions, they may become corrupted by the temptations of power and, in those cases where they do not, in time they are eventually replaced by another who may not be as restrained.

So: back to square one. Remember the old adage. Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely. To prevent that happening ad nauseam, we must focus on the system minus the personalities. We simply cannot afford to continue to let the tail wag the dog. We are dying for something to believe in, for a statement of principles that leaves no room for misunderstanding — a creed or constitution that everyone of good faith toward their fellows can accept with clarity of mind and feel solid about.

Clearly we are overgoverned, and badly. Changes are needed, and the politicians need a code, a job description and a clearly defined set of rules to play by. This crass and shallow ‘old pals act’ has to go. If the biggest democracy in the world, America, can impeach its president, we must not let any of our elected leaders lord it over us.
So let’s raise our moral game and ask our leaders these democratic questions: What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interest do you exercise it?

And how can we get rid of you? For if you can’t get rid of people, then they don’t have to listen to you — and is that not what has been going on?

We must have a sustainable system of government that is fair and credible, so that the future will provide our heirs with a job or means of support, a home they can live in, education, a reliable health service, dignity in old age and the right to live in peace. Surely this is what politics is really about?
West View,
La Ville Vautier,
St Ouen.