Follow the leader

This is Olivia O'Leary's Drivetime radio column from this evening. RTE claim that the podcasts are available on their website, but in reality, the latest available podcast aired on the 13th April.

I want an election. It struck me with a bang this morning that I really, really want an general election. I don’t think I have ever in my life felt so helpless, so excluded from massive decisions for which I and mine will pay for generations; so unable to have my voice as an ordinary citizen heard. I cannot count the number of times I have heard friends over recent weeks who have said that the lie awake a night worrying, trying to count the cost of policies with which they utterly disagree but feeling powerless to influence any of this. But sure who wants to listen to me, they say.

Well, we’ll have to be listened to at election time. It’s the one time in the utterly centralised system of democracy which operates in this country, that the citizens get their chance to speak. There was a time that I would have argued that an election would have been too distracting at a time of national crisis. I’m not beginning to think that it is the only thing which will allow us to address what has happened to us as a country, and try to put it right.

I want an election, and I want a Taoiseach who wants to be Taoiseach. I have never felt that’s true of Brian Cowen. I think he’s a decent man, straighter than his predecessor, but I have always felt that he viewed the premiership as a bit of unwelcome palaver, which accompanied his more important job as leader of Fianna Fáil. He has never really tried to stretch out beyond that tribe, to use the real warmth and engagement which is so obvious at a personal level, to make a connection with the people he governs. There’s a “take it, or leave it” surliness about his public persona. He could have done something about that. He chose not to.

Just like Gordon Brown, who came out to the cameras outside Number 10, Downing Street yesterday to announce his eventual resignation and then turned and walked back into Number 10. And I felt no sense of regret as I watched because it seemed to me that Gordon’s back was the view that most people had of him during his period as prime minister. Gordon’s back, or Gordon’s averted face as though Number 10 was his long overdue right and he didn’t have any need to make an effort with, or overtures to, the electorate.

Time and again I heard interviewers give him space to connect with the people. To paint his view of Britain. “Look at my record” was all he would say smugly. Yeah, well, they did.

Elections give you a chance to say what you do or don’t agree with, and there is so much going here with which people do not agree. The initial decision to guarantee the banks, including hopeless institutions like Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide. The decision to stop the inquiry into the banking crisis short of those dates which would cover its political dimension. The wishful thinking by government that the recapitalised banks would provide credit to SMEs. The pointless hemorrhaging of tax-payers money into Anglo Irish Bank. The elaborate banks and developers’ plan which is NAMA, but no plan at all, as Matt Cooper pointed out in his contribution to the Aftershock programme last night, no plan at all to help the homeowners in negative equity - the very people on who’s backs economic recovery and future tax revenues depend.

Oh yes, I think I’d like to vote on some of those issues, thank you. Just as I’d like to have my say on the scandal of corporate funding of political parties and the question that raises over so many of the disastrous property related tax break policies which subsequently undermined our whole economy.

When you’ve been in power for too long, you stop governing and you spend your time defending your record. Because you cannot admit the mistakes you made, you cannot set about putting things right. You become the problem. Elections allow for the stables to be properly cleaned out. The resulting government could still include Fianna Fáil but perhaps not those who have a vested interest in defending the status quo.

Who knows what combination the electorate would return? But at least those seeking power would have to debate with us the massive commitments that are being made in our name. At least we’d be able to raise our heads and interrupt, even for a short time, the tramp of financial jackboots across our backs. At least, for a very short while, they would have to listen to us.

Olivia O’Leary