Constitutional Change: Executive President

[ajcahill]

Dr. John Crown on Vincent Browne made a very good case for constitutional change to allow us escape the party politics that favours members of family dynasties and thoses that can get elected in marginal seats for ministerial office instead of the best and brightest the country can produce. I think he is on to something here because replacing FF with FG is not going to solve anything.

If Ireland changed it's constitution a single person could be elected directly by the people as an executive president and then appoint people like Dr Alan Ahearne of NUIG as secretary of Finance instead of Brian Lenahan as Minister of Finance. Imagine it, experts in charge rather than amateurs.

Something has got to change radically to remove us from this gombeen culture. As it is we are screwed as a nation, society and economy. Once Lisbon II is passed we will just be a backwater province of the EU.

A political system driven by solutions and idealism with the public good as it's focus rather that negativity, corruption and incompetence.

Any takers?

[Myles_per_hour]

That would be so clever. We'd end up with a FF president almost permanently.

No thanks.

[ajcahill]

Try using your brain before typing

[Demotruk]

A single person with that much power is not something I'm in favour of. The system we have now is more conducive to political compromises between the various viewpoints in society.

[jfk2008]

Twould be much easier to change the constitution to allow the Taoiseach to appoint up to eight Senators to the cabinet.

That way the Taoiseach could nominate experts to the Senate and then appoint them to the cabinet.

The Dail should then have the power to vote 'No confidence' in each individual Senator-Minister in which case they'd have to resign their ministerial posts.

That way we could have a government of experts and parliamentary oversight of the cabinet.

[ajcahill]

A single person with that much power is not something I'm in favour of. The system we have now is more conducive to political compromises between the various viewpoints in society.

Not really, it would also mean a directly elected Seanad and Dail with the excutive needing the support of both Houses to pass laws, for any laws to be passed where both houses were not controlled by the same grouping would mean compromise, while FF may hold the presidency the opposition could control the Dail Seanad or both, effectly it would be rare for anyone to be in "opposition" , so compromise would be the order of the day for much of the time.

[fergalr]

I remember an episode of the West Wing, when they're helping draft a constitution for some eastern European state and Toby's pushing a presidential model and ...I think...Josh... is arguing with him to push a parliamentary model... And Josh says that the presidential model is the less democratic of the two.

t's true though. If you want to reduce cronyism, remove multi-seat constituencies and shrink the number of elected representatives. But parliamentary democracy is a better model.

[ajcahill]

The US model is not perfect, whatever the model we need something new, for our parliamentary system is very much broken. The government do what they like, the opposition scream at them for 5 years, then everyone lies and we re-elect them again. Nothing changes, Nothing works, most people suffer.

[geraghd]

The US model is not perfect, whatever the model we need something new, for our parliamentary system is very much broken. The government do what they like, the opposition scream at them for 5 years, then everyone lies and we re-elect them again. Nothing changes, Nothing works, most people suffer.

Wouldn't that be the fault of the people then?

[Demotruk]

Yet we rank among the most democratic countries in the worlds by most standards, and parliamentary democracies tend to rank higher than presidential.