Is there something to hide?
One of the main pillars of a health democracy is accountability. If the party in power can do anything they like without any scrutiny, then democracy has failed.
Unfortunately our current executive appears intent on avoiding all scrutiny, either by the media or by the opposition. The fact that the leader of the council, Cllr McShane, refuses to engage with the Guildford Dragon is worrying in itself. If the local media cannot get information from the council then the public have no way of knowing what is going on except for the hugely biased and unreliable social media.
That was bad enough, but the latest development is setting an even more dangerous precedent. The mechanism for backbench councillors to scrutinise the work of the executive (who have all the power) are the committees – particularly the Overview and Scrutiny (O&S) committees. By convention it is the leader of the opposition who chooses the chair of these committees which is then agreed at full council. This year, the executive told Cllr Brooker (leader of the Conservatives) that they would only support him as the chair of one of the committees if he agreed for Cllr Walsh to be the other chair (instead of Cllr Wyeth-Price from R4GV).
When this was reported in the Guildford Dragon, the response was that the choice was made by full council (where the Lib Dems have a majority). Effectively this means that we should be glad that they didn’t elect 2 Lib Dem councillors as the two chairs.
We don’t believe the executive are doing this out of anything but as a favour to Cllr Walsh, who has consistently supported them. Regardless of that, setting this precedent further undermines accountability and trust in politicians. We need politicians of integrity who are prepared to be accountable, not politicians who are only interested in communicating on their own terms.
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