From Ted Vibert.
I DO not wish to prolong the debate regarding the events that led up to my resignation from the JDA but I am afraid that the chairman’s version of events outlined in your report headed JDA hit back at Vibert’s version of why he quit the party (JEP, 13 May) cannot go unchallenged.

Mrs Papworth stated that I ‘could not accept the democratic will of the Council and walked out of the meeting when his views were challenged.’

The facts are that there were seven council members present at the meeting – myself and three others, who I had recently introduced to the party and who fully supported me, and three other members – Deputy Southern, his wife Ann and Mrs Christine Papworth.

Had the council voted on the items I had brought up for discussion, democracy would have ruled the day and the council would have approved by four to three my proposals for how money could be saved to fill the £8 million cost of taking GST off food. Is that going against the will of the members? Not in my understanding of democracy, which is that the highest number of votes always wins.

The council of the JDA is not the party’s supreme policy making body. An election manifesto is put together with the approval of the members at a general meeting of members. I had, in fact, organised the first such meeting, which was scheduled for 9 May.

I had already informed the council that the plan was to have a series of quarterly meetings to discuss various aspects of our manifesto and make decisions on them to complete our manifesto by August in time for the October election.

We never completed our discussions and no vote was taken, as confirmed by Mrs Southern’s official minutes, circulated to members, so it was misleading to say that I would not accept the ‘democratic will of the council’.

I walked out of the meeting when I finally realised that I could not open their minds to anything that was not deeply entrenched in extreme left-wing politics and I had been on a mission impossible in trying to move them to the centre to make them a credible force in Jersey politics.

Unfortunately, my ill-health soon after the formation of the party left them leaderless because of the ill-health of my friend, the Rev Tony Keogh, who was also taken ill. This led to all of the moderate people who had joined the party leaving when they saw the left group take over.

This was not what I had envisaged. My vision was for a group of people to be politically active – an alliance of like-minds who could turn Jersey’s direction around over time and provide a government that not only cared about people but was also dynamic in developing the economy and leading us to prosperity with a broad-based and sound economy.