Responsibility

 

It’s hard to know where to begin isn’t it? I have many things to say about this election, and the apparent mess of a government which has resulted from it, but my main point is this: we are all, everyone of us, responsible for the Government we have, and the politicians we elected, irrespective of who we voted for, or whether we voted at all.  We have a responsibility to educate ourselves, our children, our colleagues, and friends.  That doesn’t mean telling them how to vote or trying to convince them to go with our own preferences.  Rather it means we have a role in ensuring we all understand the system, and are able to utilise it effectively; that we need to debate and discuss, so that we understand the strengths and pitfalls of the different approaches being put forward, and to remind ourselves and others that who is in government, who runs the country, matters to everyone of us.

 

Few of us fully understand proportional representation, and how to strategically use our second and subsequent votes.  This election, with so many TDs having to wait for the 8th and 9th count to be elected, and therefore relying on transfers from their peers,  particularly illustrates the importance of this.  My children have yet to learn about voting or PR, or even the role of government. They may be only (almost) 14 but a general election is surely an event to capitalise on to bring alive a political and civic curriculum? Recent referenda have too demonstrated the lack of understanding amongst the public of how our political system works. The children’s’ referendum, in which I took a particular interest, led to me having conversations with friends who wanted to know what difference the referendum would make to their childcare services, or what social work services we have.  This indicates a complete lack of understanding of the purpose of our constitution, and how it differs from our legislation and national policies, and these are matters which everyone of us should understand.  Yes, the education system has a central role in this, but we all have a part to play in our conversations, whether those are with our children, colleagues or family.

 

My grandad Quinn was alive for the 1992/3 divorce referendum, and on one of my visits, shortly before the referendum, my aunt who was also visiting.  she took my into the kitchen to advise me not to mention the impending event to ‘the boys’: my 92 year old grandfather and his 88 brother!    Well, you can imagine where that led me!  Sitting to pour the tea, I launched into a dialogue about divorce, giving examples of friends whose marriages had been a disaster; violent, abusive, and suggesting to these ultra conservative, rural men, that these friends of mine deserved a second chance.  They had never been asked to consider the reality of unfulfilled lives and expectations in the context of our legislative framework, and by the time I left that day, my Grandad was definitely considering wider and more personal issues than those relating to  dividing the land.  The Equality referendum campaign fed into this recognition that older people are sometimes not exposed to current issues, and so the students union ‘phone your gran’ campaign was about reaching out to older relatives, to make the debate real  for them.

 

Of course, the Equality campaign could be used as an argument against my suggestion that we are largely a politically  illiterate  nation, but the Equality debate mobilised young people largely through third level institutions, a cohort which is better educated and  more middle class than the rest of their peers. So, how typical are they?  I wonder if a vox pop was done on the streets of both our urban cities and our rural towns, asking people to explain PR, and to talk us through how the votes get redistributed, what would we hear?  And then of course, there is the issue of local vs national politics, and the fact that some constituencies appear to have confused the two. Lowry and the Healy Rae’s are very clear that they are only interested in representing local issues, and now we have a new Independent TD vowing to be the ‘West Cork’ equivalent of these parochial politicians who delight only in showing them up in the big smoke how we run things down here.  And the question of integrity and social skills (i.e. ability to get on with people) doesn’t seem to apply in certain areas of the country either.  Its not just Lowry whose appointment  baffles in this regard, but when a sitting Minister is referred to as ‘AK 47’ in the national press because of his volatile personality, it would make you wonder why people think he is the right person to represent their views.

 

There have been elections in Uganda recently. This is not a country known for its democratic processes.  There are currently investigations into the mutilated bodies of six children which were found in recent weeks, and which are believed to have been the result of ritual killings, aimed at bringing good luck to the relevant party. That’s how seriously they take elections over there.  In comparison, how many of the political leaflets shoved through your door did you even read? How much of the leaders’ debates did you watch?  To what extent did you google, ask, or chat with others to inform your voting decision?

It’s safe to anticipate plenty of resentment and deflection in the coming weeks, as we seek to find a government that can fulfil its purpose.  And during this time. how many of us will distance ourselves by noting we didn’t vote these feckers in? Well, we did, in our hoards, and even if we didn’t personally vote in the mad ones, the bad ones, the lefties, the conservatives, the independents and the old guard, what did we do to shape and inform our next government?  I suspect most of us, if we are honest, will have to admit: nothing.   We are all culpable.