THE STATES have expended enormous amounts of energy and have spent a great deal of time in the consideration of government reform. The results of successive debates, however, have been meagre in comparison with the efforts made to produce a programme of change capable of meeting the expectations of a majority of Members.

That said, an important step forward was taken last week. It was agreed that when the Island next goes to the polls, there will be a general election, with Senators, Constables and Deputies all being elected on the same day.

This will mean that the period leading up to the polling day will be hectic, but it is quite possible that the concentration of campaigning and the focal point of the general election itself will help to revitalise Islanders’ interest in the democratic process. Indeed, as Deputy Judy Martin has suggested, it might help to minimise the ‘election fatigue’ engendered by electioneering which used to begin in early autumn and continued through into November.

But there is a further advantage in moving to a single polling day. It will mean that candidates cannot enjoy two bites of the electoral cherry by first standing for Senator and then, having failed in that bid, going on to try to capture a Deputy’s seat.

That this has been common practice for many years is beyond dispute. It is also beyond dispute that the opportunity to take part in Senatorial hustings has unfairly raised the profiles of many candidates who realised that they were most unlikely to win an Islandwide mandate but who were eager to maximise their chances of becoming Deputies.

Although we might be no further forward as far as creating a single level of States membership or resolving the problem of the disparate sizes of Island constituencies are concerned, at least one electoral anomaly has been addressed and removed.

It has been suggested that last week’s decision planted a ‘Trojan horse’ which will eventually damage Island democracy by devaluing the status of Senators and their Islandwide mandate. It has also been suggested that a further step has been take on the road towards party politics.

Given what appears to be the extreme reluctance of the States to engage in a new round of root and branch reform and the fact that parties cannot be willed into existence without popular support, neither of these predictions is likely to prove accurate in the foreseeable future.