THE South’s election was notable for several reasons, not least that straws in the wind were just that – straws.
The first straw was that Sinn Féin were ‘mired’ in controversy and would suffer badly in the election. All that stuff about Brian Stanley and Michael McMonagle and Niall Ó Donnghaile. As it happened, while Stanley did win a seat as an Independent, nobody in the Southern electorate appeared to give much of a damn about the media-manufactured straws.
The second straw was the series of gaffes by the new Fine Gael leader Simon Harris. There was his famous exchange with Charlotte in Cork, from which he emerged looking like a man who doesn’t like ordinary people who answer back. Michael O’Leary of Ryanair, at a Fine Gael candidate’s launch, pissed off thousands of teachers in the South when he indicated that, unlike himself, they were hopeless outside the four walls of their classroom. The polls reacted, especially to Charlotte of Cork. But when the votes were counted, not much difference.
As I write, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are putting on their dancing shoes for another five-year waltz in government. They’ll need a new mudguard, since the Greens have been blamed for the government’s austerity so much that they scraped home with just one TD. But Labour and the Social Democrats look like they can’t wait to waltz with the big boys, regardless of the chasm between them and their new government boyfriends.
Still, people get the politicians they vote for, right? Well, not quite. People also get the politicians they don’t vote for. In 2020, some 62 per cent of the South’s electorate actually voted; this time it was 59.6 per cent. So in 2020, over a third of people who could have voted didn’t bother. On Friday’s election the stay-at-homes were heading towards half.
There were all sorts of reasons for this deplorable and dangerous trend. The November weather, holding polling on a Friday when many young people were en route home from college, the generally lacklustre campaign. But whatever the reason, this can’t-be-bothered attitude urgently needs fixing. Whether it’s a raffle for a bottle of whiskey at the polling or, as in Australia, a law making voting compulsory, the populace must somehow exercise their franchise. Apathy is no excuse – we all need to play our part. Voting matters.
That said, how did Simon Harris, a gauche, irritable figure with a high opinion of himself, manage to lead his party to 38 seats? How did Micheál Martin find himself indisputable top dog with 48 Dail seats? And what streak of masochism is it that makes the Irish people, so many of them suffering as they try to feed their families and keep a roof over their head – send back the same parties that created this crisis? As things stand, the past three weeks have been a huge waste of energy and money. We’re almost certainly back with the same old same old.
One topic that was ignored by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael and pretty well every candidate except Mary Lou and Sinn Féin was a border poll. When bowing out, Leo Varadkar warned that the drive for a united Ireland needed to move from being an aspiration to being a strategy for all parties. Did you hear any other party besides Sinn Féin even mentioning a border poll during the campaign? Nope, me neither.
Oh, and one last thing. The media have begun questioning the leadership of Mary Lou McDonald. Regardless of her failure to win a second SF seat in her constituency, regardless of her being elected only on the third count, Mary Lou McDonald is by some distance the most accomplished politician in Ireland.
And so we go again…
