Referendum hustings: all you need to know

Wednesday 03 October 2018

Unlike the hustings which are held in each parish district ahead of elections in Guernsey, tonight's hustings for the island wide voting referendum is being held at the biggest indoor public facility in the island: Beau Sejour.

Starting at 19:00, there will be presentations on each of the five options available, question time, and a summary at the end.

Pictured: Tonight's hustings is at Beau Sejour starting at 19:00.

The 400 seat theatre will be open to the public, with some questions being taken from the audience and some being asked from the selection submitted before the event started. People watching via a live stream on Facebook will also be able to ask questions and some will be posed during the evening.

General timings for the hustings suggest it will all be over by 21:00, giving two hours for the panel to convince us to support their referendum choice when we go to the polls a week today, Wednesday 10 October.

The five options include some variations of island wide voting alongside maintaining the status quo and some variations of our existing district system.

Pictured: The five options in the referendum offer different scenarios for future elections in Guernsey. 

The panel at tonight's hustings will be chaired by Jurat Stephen Jones, who will open the event at 19:00.

Each of the five options will then be presented to the audience at Beau Sejour, those watching via the Facebook live stream and those listening on BBC Radio Guernsey.

Deputy Peter Ferbrache will present Option A, Caroline McManus will present Option B and Deputy Richard Graham will present Option C. Those options each have official campaign groups while Options D and E don't. This evening Deputies Barry Brehaut and Matt Fallaize will present those options. 

An hour has been allocated for question time, including allowing three minutes for each of the guest speakers to sum up on behalf of the five options. 

Pictured: The Beau Sejour theatre which is where the hustings are being held. 

Some of the speeches this evening will involve visual presentations, which will be shown on the Beau Sejour large screen while the presentations themselves will be made from a lectern to the right of the screen.

The panel themselves will be sat in front of the stage, either side of Jurat Jones.

Pictured top: The referendum on island wide voting will be held on Wednesday 10 October, with polling stations in each parish open between 08:00 and 20:00. The results will be known on Thursday 11 October.