More
than ever, Irish people believe their government is not keeping pace with their
expectations and situations. In the last year Ireland has seen groundswells of
popular protest in which crowds largely composed of poor and middle-class communities
who have taken to the streets to demand a more accountable responsive and
democratic government using the issue of water to voice it.
Beginning
in September 2008, Our democratically elected government blanket guaranteed our
bankrupt banks, sending Ireland into years of a spiraling decay of poverty and
austerity without the consent of the people who elected them. WELL while there
was uproar in the minds of thousands of citizens, no one knew or could have
imagined what this guarantee would mean, not even the Government themselves.
After a decade of growth Ireland was now broke
and will remain broke for the lifetime of the majority of its citizens and its
children. But the people did not take to the streets, probably through
ignorance of not knowing what was happening, after all most of us still had the
riches gathered after a decade of prosperity. We were told we could and would
get out of this without anyone knowing the extent of the disaster which had occurred.
Scandal after high-profile scandal implicated
ruling politicians and their corrupt banking cronies in the rape of Ireland and
it citizens. The peoples moral outrage is entirely justified, and the factors
linked to Ireland’s governance woes are well known - a rise in corruption,
cronyism, and criminal-ism among the ranks of elected TDs and officials, alongside
crushing government bureaucracy. However, the root causes mostly go unexplored.
For starters, the apparent corruption and criminal-ism in Ireland have only
started to come into the light as a nation is buggered time and time again to
pay odious and immoral debts to un-secured bondholders. This is part, and product
of two developments: decreased transparency and interference from Europe and
the IMF who were invited to Ireland in 2010 by the then coalition of a weak
Fianna Fáil and Green Party coalition. In addition, the proliferation's of
elected politicians without the qualifications to run a piss up in a brewery
yet alone a country in deep deep trouble. Although deplorable as it is, its a
direct response to irrational voter choices, voters selected the politicians
who they believed could work best for Ireland after an election of lies and broken
promises by the Fine Gael and Labour Party.( the words still ring loudly in my
ears) NOT ANOTHER PENNY, and LABOURS WAY or FRANKFURTS WAY.
As
it turned out, the remedies to these problems were somewhat counterproductive. and
EU and IMF bureaucrats took control of Ireland's lying and deceitful politicians and stuck
the boot in. Had they engaged in more citizenry, a much better solution could
and would have been found.
The
good news is that the lower and middle class might be mobilizing for just that
purpose. This December 10th, the citizens will take to the streets to protest peacefully
against a Government who were elected on a manifesto of lies and deceit. For
the most part, the people’s outrage is directed not against ordinary
civil servants, but against the political elite class, which, they believe, have failed to provide basic security and protection for the human right to water.
Once they win, the protesters will make the jump from chanting anti-government
slogans to engaging in pragmatic politics. This spring, the public, especially
the poor and middle class, will engage in a vigorous quest for solutions to our
current debacle through informed debate which should lead to the passage of new
legislation in a new people led Government. All this suggests that the poor and
middle class are capable of embracing politics and promoting badly needed political
reform,
Roll on the next election
where a leader will lead and the people will govern and so say all of us.
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