“...that government: of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
Almost 150 years later, it might be prudent to ask, do Lincoln’s pillars of democracy hold true in this tiny nation of ours? The answer isn’t the overwhelming yes that it ought to be. Of the people, by the people, for the people; is that how we would describe our present government? Somehow I doubt it.
Ours is no longer a government of the people. Two years ago, Bertie Ahern assembled the present coalition of Fianna Fail, the Progressive Democrats and the Greens. Only 857,000 electors, out of a population of more than 4 million, gave a first preference vote to Fianna Fail in the election of 2007. Although Mary Harney continues in the Cabinet, the Progressive Democrats no longer exist. The people who voted Green did so because they supported a different agenda to the one Fianna Fail had been peddling for years; yet it is their party that keeps Brian Cowan in power. The only test of the Government’s accord with the people was the Lisbon referendum. [Editor's note: This article was written prior to the recent local, European and by elections]. The people voted against the Fianna Fail recommendation. The Government have been cast adrift by the electorate; they have no claim any more to be representative of the people.
Neither is this a government by the people. Brian Cowan was not elected by the people to be Taoiseach. He didn’t lead his party to victory in a general election. He may satisfy the terms of the Constitution but he is an imposter; a pretender to the throne of Ireland. The government has lost touch with the people; it no longer has the public’s confidence. So much has changed since the last election. We are unrecognisable to the nation that went to the polls two years ago. The Government is now pursuing policies undreamt of in 2007. They may claim what they are doing makes economic sense, but they have no mandate to borrow billions of Euros and bring this nation to brink of bankruptcy. Fianna Fail stood on a ticket based around a National Development Plan that promised growth in the economy and improvement in infrastructure. Circumstances have obviously changed; shouldn’t they therefore check back with us to see if we agree with their new strategies?
As for a government for the people? This is now the most unpopular Government in living memory. It doesn’t share the confidence of the people. It remains in office simply because we only hold general elections only once every five years. What justification is that for remaining in power?
If Brian Cowan and his Government colleagues believed in true democracy, they would immediately submit themselves to the will of the people; it is their moral duty to seek election, not to hold on to power for power’s sake.
Therein though lays the problem, and the true nature of what now motivates this Government. Power has an addictive potency that corrupts the minds of even the most decent of men and women. Brian Cowan and the Government will hang on, not because they believe they have the peoples’ mandate, but because they know they don’t have it. We now have a government that is no longer of, by or for the people; it is one that is simply of, by and for itself.
The country is in crisis, the Government should do the right thing and come before the electorate; only then can it claim to be: of the people, by the people, for the people.
Copyright © David Jones, 2009
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