Letters: Issues, not personalities, vital in election

Published on Friday 18 February 2011 15:56

While the West applauds the revolutions in Egypt and waits with bated breath to see what will unfold in Bahrain and Libya, I am ashamed to see our democracy at work in Scotland.

What will be our big election debates? Wind farms versus nuclear power stations? Public sector cuts? Our collective response for the recession? The loss of a generation of young people without hope for a future in the job market?

No, we will be watching Big Eck versus the Grey Man. Our government tells us that this will be a battle of personalities and the media seem to be game for this match.

Leaders are important but, as Wendy Alexander knows, their reign can be short lived. Their party's policies may last the full term of the elected government. We have no excuse for this puerile behaviour. We are not a third world dictatorship. We have had centuries to fine tune our democratic processes and we have a responsibility to vote on policy, not on personality.

This is not X Factor; this is the future of our country.

Anne M Keenan

Roshven

Lochailort, Highlands

There is a clear message for all voters in Scotland in May. It is a bedrock of any civilised society that it offers its people a justice system that is impartial and seen to be impartial by them.

A substantial tranche of people, including some of the UK's most respected lawyers, together with a UN official observer of the Lockerbie trial (Professor Hans Koechler of Vienna), and so many others, including myself, the committee of the Justice for Megrahi (JFM) group and all the signatories to its petition, question the safety of the verdict at Zeist convicting Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi of the Lockerbie bombing. Our number grows and grows.

On top of that, and more important to Scottish voters, our Scottish Criminal Case Review Commission, after three years work, decided that the verdict might be a miscarriage of justice. As things stand, we cannot be sure we got that verdict right.

I urge therefore that voters ask of any candidatefor office, no matter which party he or she belongs to: "What action do you propose to take over the Lockerbie verdict if elected?" Afterwards hold him or her to the answer.

If the answer does not include a fully empowered review of the verdict, then your vote may contribute to appalling consequences for all of us in Scotland.

Our legal system may become confirmed in putting its own reputation above delivering justice impartially to the rest of us, as already seen so clearly in the McKie fingerprint case.

(Dr) Jim Swire

Chipping Campden

Gloucestershire