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A fiery debate just to withdraw a political petition occurred yesterday in the States with a battle from some to force debate on the matter against the wishes of the petitioners.
A motion to withdraw the petition from debate was submitted on Wednesday morning by the lead requerant – Deputy John Dyke – with the support of his fellow signatories.
It was seeking to handover responsibility for where to transfer household and commercial waste from the States Trading Supervisory Board to the parish douzaines and investigate whether more waste could be processed locally rather than being mostly packaged and exported.
He said heavy criticism from Environment & Infrastructure, The States Trading Supervisory Board, and the Development & Planning Authority enhanced a desire to step back and reformulate the proposal.
He said it’s unlikely those official committee positions are completely full of “red herrings”.
Deputy Dyke also admitted there were drafting issues and said the group of deputies may “possibly bring back something very different from this” later this year.
But STSB President, Deputy Peter Roffey said the Requête should’ve been debated so the States could’ve expressed a view on it. He argued it had created an “enormous amount of work” for officers and now it may be brought back in a different form in a few months' time.
He urged members to force the debate by rejecting the withdrawal.
Policy & Resources President, Deputy Lyndon Trott – one of the signatories – said “nothing would be gained apart from a lot of bad feeling” if debate went ahead. He revealed that “challenging” and regrettable language had already been thrown around outside the chamber and that should be stopped rather than facilitating it through a “phantom debate”.
Pictured: Waste management is handled centrally by the States, with the STSB acting as the waste disposal authority with most household and commercial waste diverted to Longue Hougue.
Deputy Neil Inder, who submitted an amendment to get around some of the issues in the “badly worded, badly drafted” Requête, agreed. He said accusations of “red herrings" in what were “reasonable letters” from key committees risked the States entering “dangerous territory”.
In the buildup to debate he said there had been equally dangerous accusations that civil servants were “corrupt”, people were conspiring against the requerants, and that “independent companies are up to something”.
Deputy Sasha Kazantseva-Miller said forcing the debate when the petitioners agreed to withdraw it was “perverse logic” and the States should be “grown up” in respecting their wishes.
On the other hand, Deputy Peter Ferbrahce said the Requête was a “Horlicks” and a “real mess”, and the signatories should face the music of their badly prepared document on the floor of the Assembly.
The States agreed to withdraw the petition by 26 votes to 10.
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