Island-wide by-election if Deputy is sacked

Wednesday 31 March 2021

An island-wide by-election will be held if politicians follow the Code of Conduct Panel's recommendation to kick Deputy Chris Le Tissier out the States, it has been confirmed.

States' Assembly & Constitution Committee President Carl Meerveld said that, by law, his committee would be obliged to organise a by-election if the States' Assembly chooses to sack Deputy Le Tissier.

That is the course of action advised by the States' Members Code of Conduct Panel, whose three-member panel concluded that the disgraced deputy should be expelled from the States for offensive comments he made on social media using a pseudonym.

Deputy Le Tissier has submitted a Subject Access Request and has spoken about a legal challenge to what he describes as a "disproportionate and draconian penalty" for his tweets. 

Pictured: The motion to expel Deputy Le Tissier from the States of Guernsey will go before the States Assembly for approval.

The panel has submitted its findings in a report to SACC, which is bound by States rules to present that report and its recommendations to the Assembly at the next available meeting on 28 April. 

"It is in the public interest to address this as soon as possible, rather than putting it into the workstream and leaving it hanging over the States," said SACC President Carl Meerveld. 

"If the States decides to follow the recommendations, it automatically triggers a by-election."

There was a proposal in the original island-wide voting proposals to only hold a by-election if there are two vacant seats. However, that was not approved and is not an option. 

Neither is it an option to simply offer the job to the 39th candidate in the 2020 Election, which was Fergus Dunlop, or to unsuccessful candidates in descending order until one takes the position. Deputy Meerveld said "there are no provisions in the law to allow us to do that."

He also told Express that the same rules for a full election would, hypothetically, apply to a by-election, including combined manifestos, candidate expenses and voting periods. 

"That would be at exactly the same level - it is written into the rules of the election," he said. 

Pictured: First-time Deputy Chris Le Tissier could be expelled from the States just seven months after he finished 37th in the General Election.

"The only differences we could make are procedural. For example, we may not use electronic counting, as there would only be one vote per paper, not 38."

If the States does follow the Conduct Panel's recommendations, Deputy Meerveld said a plan is already drawn up in anticipation of the States needing to call its first island-wide election, which would be a significant undertaking and inevitably cost "hundreds of thousands of pounds".

"From SACC's perspective, we started working on the mechanism for implementing a by-election after the election."