Le Fondré survives no confidence vote

Tuesday 10 November 2020

Senator John Le Fondré has held onto the island's top political role after surviving a vote of no confidence.

19 States Members voted in favour of ousting the Chief Minister, and 29 voted against. Education Minister Senator Tracey Vallois abstained from voting.

Following the vote, the States Assembly will meet as usual next Tuesday (17 November), at which meeting the Chief Minister will be invited to nominate a States Member to become Minister for Children and Housing, replacing Senator Sam Mézec, who stepped down to support the no confidence bid.

Assistant Ministers Deputy Montfort Tadier and Senator Steve Pallett also resigned from their roles. As a result, the following Assistant Minister posts also need to be filled in due course:

• Assistant Minister for Health and Social Services, replacing Senator Steve Pallett
• Assistant Minister for Economic Development, Tourism, Sport and Culture
• Assistant Minister for the Environment

The vote of no confidence proposal had been brought by Senator Kristina Moore in the wake of the bitter row over Chief Executive Charlie Parker’s second job at UK real estate firm New River, for which the Chief Minister gave verbal permission.

She opened the debate this morning by emphasising: “This is not personal, this is about principles, values and performance.”

While she touched upon the saga over the outgoing Chief Executive’s second job, she went on to explain that the reasons behind bringing the vote were numerous, and included:

• a failure to deliver a population policy,
• putting forward a new model for healthcare in need of several amendments,
• and promising to build a cheaper hospital but seeing costs soar.

She went on to accuse Senator Le Fondré of “allowing a culture of bullying” to sweep throughout the public service and said he had lost the support of the public during the pandemic, citing a statistic that confidence had fallen to 37%.

Fighting for his future, the Chief Minister opened by warning States Members that a “vote of no confidence is an extremely serious matter at any time, but especially in the middle of a pandemic", before taking the States Assembly through the ‘wins’ of his term so far.

Turning to his own character, he challenged “anyone who dares question my commitment to islanders” and his ability to continue to lead, speaking of how he had maintained “clarity of thought” despite “months of sleep deprivation.”

He admitted making “genuine mistakes” in the absence of having “full information to hand”, but questioned: “Have I really made such a large number of mistakes I haven’t tried to rectify?”

Senator Le Fondré concluded by emphasising that, to remove a Chief Minister in the middle of a pandemic with Brexit looming would swapping one crisis for another.

CLICK HERE to see the full breakdown of how States Members voted.