Irish Democracy R.I.P.

I was beginning to warm to Enda Kenny. He has a gentlemanly air of integrity, rare in politics, not just in Ireland. He already had one hand on the keys of office when Bertie stood beside Charlie Haughey’s grave and gave a tearful impression of wanting to jump in after his old boss and mentor. Wise old Fianna Fail heads are still trying to calculate what good Bertie thought would come from his fulsome praise for the arch-chancer. The country was debating this conundrum when Bertie’s shenanigans in Manchester were exposed to public view. The plan people of Ireland were still mulling over these developments when Justice Morris set-off the greatest judicial salvo in modern times.

Enda would have been justified in starting to think about ministerial appointments. Bertie, Haughey’s bagman, was badly tainted and now his master’s crimes against democracy were exposed. What choice would the electorate have but to vote for change? Enda ought to have plunged the dagger but he pulled his punches instead. He settled for his mug-shot on a few posters, looking like the contented cat who got the cream, until civil war broke out in Fine Gael. We’re used to bloodletting after the election debacle but this is a first. The party wants us to know it’s thinking of dumping its leader before the general election has even been called. The foot-soldiers of destiny can barely hide their grins. Who promised what in the dead of night to produce this stroke of good fortune?

Mr Deasy, TD for Waterford, is up there along with Dermot McMorrough and the IRA army council in the betrayal stakes. What’s his game-plan? Leadership of the Fine Gael party can’t be part of it. Whatever ambitions he might have had in that direction are as healthy as last year’s Christmas turkey. Enda Kenny’s chances of getting the top job are not much better. Who’s going to believe in a leader whose own troops are in rebellion?
There’s little time for recovery. The damage is done. Ireland’s peculiar one-party concept of democracy is, barring unimaginable disasters, secure for another parliamentary term. So what’s the point in holding elections at all? Why not save ourselves the effort and expense? We all know the outcome. Charlie Haughey’s apprentice, heir to his master’s political estates, will carry on regardless. Climbing trees in north Dublin and signing blank cheques did him no harm after all.
There might be some benefit from this shambles if the electors turned their fire on the opposition and threw them out, Kenny, Deasy and the rest. If Fine Gael can’t offer an alternative government after the tribunals, the clear evidence of thieving and corruption, and a seriously unbalanced economy, they deserve nothing less. Democracy needs a viable opposition, a government in waiting, and Ireland doesn’t have one. The Labour Party’s pathetic contribution to this democratic disaster is to hint they might throw their lot in with Bertie after the election. Is that the best our political system can offer? Fine Gael were given a severe warning at the last election. If this democracy business is too complicated for them it’s time to put them out of their misery, in the national interest. With FG off the stage the PD’s might become a proper political party rather than the moral wing of Fianna Fail. They could turn themselves into a credible alternative government while Labour spend the next Dail fondling Bertie’s “socialist” credentials in the back of the government car.
As Yeats might have said;
‘Democratic Ireland’s dead and gone, It’s with Charles Haughey in the grave.’