A large majority of respondents to a caycompass.com poll think civil servants should have the right to sign a petition against a government plan.
This newspaper previously questioned whether it is proper to ban all civil servants from signing petitions, and we would generally agree with the sentiment expressed in the poll.
However, one of the respondents who commented on our poll made an interesting point: civil servants exercise the right to sign petitions at their own risk. He said if anyone in the private sector was to sign a petition against a plan of their employer, chances are he or she would soon be looking for another job.
Premier McKeeva Bush has said the reason many of his plans aren’t being executed in a timely manner is that civil servants are not doing what the elected government instructs them to do, or, at the very least, have been dragging their feet while doing it.
This kind of passive resistance has been evidenced in recent years as multiple government ministries, departments and authorities have failed to provide auditable accounts.
It raises questions about civil servants, especially those in authority positions or working for ministries, signing a petition stating they are against a specific government plan. The public would probably see this as a sign that the proposal didn’t have a chance of succeeding, leading to doubt of the elected government. That is the point to which we take exception.
Civil servants should not have the power to veto an elected government decision through the proverbial back door. That power should come only through properly held referendums in which the entire electorate has a say.
Some might argue that without civil servants, public-initiated referendums have little chance of getting the necessary petition signatures. But the electorate overwhelmingly approved the referendum provisions when the new Constitution was passed in May 2009. The high threshold of signatures needed to trigger a referendum was highlighted and debated beforehand. It’s too late now to complain that signing a petition is an absolute right when the laws of the land don’t support that claim.
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