Change We Can Believe In?

And so, the race is on. Enough posters survived the Night of the Big Wind to keep us focused. We’re to exercise our democratic prerogatives in a few weeks. The plans and the pundits get a brisk outing on the course every morning Noonan night. We are accosted by cheery canvassers here, there and everywhere. It may be the longest three weeks ever with nothing for it but to endure. And yet…

A Great Cull has taken place among serving politicians and especially in Fianna Fáil. It is not stretching the truth to say that Micheál Martin has had to reach out into the Senate and county councils to fill his front bench. No harm in that and we’re sure they’re all admirable people. But still… it’s a first.
In some respects, though not in all, this election is a watershed. For the first time in ages there are real arguments about big national issues. There’s also the fascinating prospect of a battle between Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin to lead the Opposition. And of course, the age profile of the incoming parliament will be very different from the outgoing.
Great. But will this change the actual politics? That’s the question.
Apparently, the prospect of doing just that was what seeded Democracy Now, a loose consortium of worthies united by their commitment to three objectives but otherwise free to roam across the political agenda as they saw fit.
Being a celebrity columnist is a curious and weirdly elevated calling. It offers you the moral high ground. You get the chance to voice the thoughts of many without ever having been democratically mandated to do so. You can move in rarefied circles, however one might define them. You get used to the notion of yourself as a thinker who is both important and popular.
Since many already have (ehhhh) elevated opinions of their own significance in general, the prospects are high that some might be seduced into thinking that firstly they cradle the future of democracy and secondly that they are in with a good shout of being elected…
Few phrases are more chillingly conspiratorial than ‘some of us have been thinking…’
Well, fair’s fair. Scoff as people might, it’s hard to see, for example, Eamon Dunphy being more volatile and idiosyncratic than Jackie Healy-Rae, right?
Nor can we disagree with the general tenor of what is being said by prospective Democracy Now candidates. The bank bailout is indeed a deeply immoral and unjust coercion of an innocent population. The old politics has many redundant characteristics. For all the talk of reform, the political parties are unlikely to follow through on promises to reduce the numbers in the Dáil and Seanad. Their most likely effort will be to attack the single transferable vote in favour of a list system that is little better than the Taoiseach’s nomination of 11 Senators…
But what was envisaged? How might it operate?
At the end of the day it seems to me that the commentariat’s unexpressed but agreed and preferred outcome from the General Election is a minority Fine Gael government with 65 seats or so, kept in power by a loose aggregation of high-minded independents reminding them of their promises and generally keeping them in order.
It’s hard not to think of it as a Greek chorus. And, it’s also remarkably close to what the Seanad should be set up to do.
But it’s not what most voters want, if the polls are anything to go by. Of course, that may be because the option wasn’t offered in the polls, Democracy Now being subsumed into the holdall category of independents where (quel horreur!) they languish with various local chieftains and eccentrics and a puppet or two known to some as Rag, Tag and Bobtail…
Well, let’s see what happens. Apparently, for the first time in at least a generation voters are robustly and politely engaging canvassers and candidates in debate. It’s a start and, with the exception of those who interdict them with the statement ‘we’re all Sinn Féin around here’, a very good thing. Those who are elected will have earned their corn.
If that’s the case, if we really put ’em through their paces and winnow the wheat from the chaff so the best are both elected and unambiguously informed of what the most of us are contending with, we won’t need Democracy Now.
That might serve our democracy better in the long run. You know, solving our own problems instead of looking to Pale Riders, White Knights and gurus to do it on our behalf…
P.S. Twenty years ago this coming July, Tom Oliver, a good and decent man, was abducted on his farm in Omeath in County Louth by the IRA and murdered in cold blood. A dog would have been treated with more respect and compassion. He was survived by his widow Bridie and seven children. Many people are queasy at the prospect that this area may well be represented in the new Dáil by Gerry Adams.
Of course, we can’t change the past and shouldn’t spend too much time there. We live in the present and should be looking to the future. Things have changed, people have changed. But some things just can’t be washed or wished away.