[If you’re intending to vote in the St Peter Port and St Martin’s elections, here’s the link to our Voter Information ‘Hub’.]
The number of candidates standing in the parish elections for Douzenier or Constable has jumped dramatically from 39 in 2019 to 67 in 2020.
There has been a particularly big increase in the number of women coming forward to be a Douzenier, following Women in Public Life’s campaign to inspire more women to consider representing their local community.
Shelaine Green, Chair of Women in Public Life, said:
“We’re overjoyed to see such a surge of interest in the parish elections. A huge well done to the parish officials who recognised the need to publicise the elections beyond the Gazette Officielle and took part in videos, put up banners, ran drop-ins and posted on social media.
“Their hard work paid off. Last year, there was only one election in the Island where there were more candidates than seats available. This year, there are seven of them.
“As the group behind the campaign to inspire more women to consider standing, of course we are really pleased to see such a high numbers of female candidates and we congratulate each one for stepping forward to represent her local community. Looking at the Douzenier elections specifically, there are 19 new female candidates which is nearly four times the number in 2019 when only five new women stood.
“But elections aren’t just about new candidates. Across the Island, there are 22 existing Douzeniers re-standing, of which 86% are men, which means the overall percentage of women in the candidate pool is 39%. That’s still significantly greater than this year’s island-wide election when the percentage of female candidates was 24%”.
“Turning to Constables, Torteval is guaranteed to continue to have two female Constables as Becky Link is not being challenged, Douzenier Shane Cummings is stepping up to Constable in St Andrews and Douzeniers Rosie Henderson and Zoe Lihou are competing for a Constable seat in St Peter Port. We’ll be following all the elections closely”.
Front page article in Guernsey Press.
