Monday, May 18, 2009

Eastville's Green candidate promises to pilot a 'petition for recall' system if elected

I've been arguing that voters should have the ability to petition for the recall of elected reps such as MPs and Councillors here on my MP Kerry MCarthy's blog. Unsurprisingly she is not in favour of the idea!! I think its very important to empower voters between elections, giving them the ability, under certain circumstances (such as the current expenses scandal), to force a resignation - apparently she thinks such a system would be open to abuse (interesting word to use, given the current circumstances of many MPs)!! As part of the debate I pledged as follows:

I'm very happy to give a guarantee to Eastville's voters that if I'm elected I would resign if it was shown that large numbers of my constituents felt I had breached Nolan's Seven Principles of Public Life for instance. Many MPs have breached these - they should resign!!

6 comments:

  1. Is that the picture you meant to post with this item?

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  2. Its someone presenting a petition to a councillor and they are looking grateful, plus it has my bike in the corner. In that respects it is ideal. However, I think it should identify the recently departed Pete Taylor as the petitioner.

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  3. I'll change the pic. I went for a file with petition in its title.

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  4. Picture changed. Thanks for the observations Chris and Steve.

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  5. Apart from featuring the late Pete Taylor it also showed Easton's LABOUR councillor receiving the petition! The devil is in the detail.

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  6. I made far too hasty a choice.

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Genuine, open, reasonable debate is most welcome. Comments that meet this test will always be published.