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Whilst looking at old threads on Republic of Cork, I came upon this impassioned plea from a green supporter in 2007.
It speaks for itself and is worth looking at in view of therecent election results.
It may even be relevant ot ongoing discussions in the green Party today.
Originally Posted by corkoniense
I know a thread has been started on this, but I wanted to get this message across clearly. I have just posted a message on Dan Boyle's blog, and since he doesn't seem to update it much and has apparently come on this forum, I thought it might be a place to broadcast my opinion on the whole mess.
Here goes......
Hi Dan, After the initial devestation of seeing the The Party emerge from the elections with nary a scratch, compounded by the loss of fine parliamentarians such as Joe Higgins and your good self, my gloom has deepened with the thought that the Greens are actually going to do a deal with the Mexicans. I cannot emphasise how big a mistake this will be on the part of the Greens, and it has nothing to do with smaller parties getting swallowed up. Remember, the PDs got annihilated in the last election but in 2002 they doubled their seats following five years with FF.
No, my problem is simply with the numbers. Between 1997 and 2002 Ray Burke, Liam Lawlor and Beverly Cooper Flynn were all kicked out of FF for very Fianna Fail-like behaviour -namely, brazen-faced corruption - for the simple reason that to stay in office, FF needed the PDs. The Government would have fallen without their support and that is not good enough for a party whose simple raison d'etre is to retain office at all costs and get enough of its cronies into the top jobs. Therefore, the PDs were able to keep an eye on the worst excesses of FF behaviour and so well regarded crooks within the party (like the charming Raphael P.!) had to walk the plank when the charges against them were overwhelming.
However, in 2002 FF returned with 81 seats and did not technically need the PDs, who had returned with eight. This is because the four genetically modified Fianna Failers - erroneously referred to in the national press as...ahem...."independents" - would always vote with The Party, thus giving them 85 votes, one more than the magic 84 required to form a working majority. The...ahem...."independents" voted with the Government on EVERY single division since the current administration came to power in 1997, and could in no way be regarded as indepenent. One of them has since rejoined the party and the other, despite having voiced his opposition to the Greens, did a deal with Bertie last night following three hours of negotiations. They are cheaply bought these....ahem..."independents" !
Therefore, although the Taoiseach decided that the people had voted back in the FF-PD coalition in 2002 and would form a government on that basis, he now knew that his party were not overly-reliant on the PDs and could indugle in his party's favourite past time: finding jobs for the boys. This gave us the spectacle of Martin Cullen, Dick Roche et al. Another reason to include the PDs was to use them as a convenient scapegoat for what has become a major FF policy, albeit softly softly: reletntless privatisation of the public services (cf eircom and Independent Newspapers). If the PDs stayed quiet about incompetence and corruption, then privatisation of public services would continue, the liberalisation of trades, semi-skilled and non-skilled services would continue, while token efforts at liberalising the professions would ensure that the barristers and pharmacists (and farmers!) who support and make up the PDs would maximise profits from their highly regulated closed shops. On top of that, the gargantuan ego of Mickey McDowell could be sated by allowing him to run Gotham City from the Batcave.
With the exception of Ivor Callely (in my view, expelled for reasons other than a paint job), nobody was forced out from high office between 2002 and 2007. The Fine Gael deserters who voted PDs in 2002 could plainly see that their new party was not holding the FF muckers to account at all, and Martin Cullen, Michael Martin and Dick Roche could continue in their plum jobs despite gross incomeptence (voting machines, nursing home charges and Galway water). Martin Cullen even got promoted, which as a former PD who deserted that party to go back to FF, must have been a real two fingers to PD activists. His promotion certainly proved to be two fingers to the people of Cork. Anyway, while there has been much talk of the "people" having spoken in 2007, the only clear message was that people who had given the PDs the watchdog role in 2002 decided that they had failed miserably in this role, and they were spot on. Michael McDowell was reported to have said "we got away with it Bertie", following the Manchester hot pot scandal last September, Well, Berie got away with it, but McDowell most certainly did not.
Which, in a very roundabout way, brings me to my point about numbers. FF have 78 seats. With two PDs and four independents they reach the magical 84 mark. All this talk about the need for stable government is nonsense. The independents are bought cheaply, the PDs will privatise the health service and demand that a blind eye be turned, as much as possible, to labour exploitation and so on, something which the builders' party is only too happy to go along with. NOBODY will vote against that Government, because NOBODY defies the whip in FF Governments. If you think that they do, you are erroneously assuming that these people think for themselves. They do not. They are elected because around 40% of the popular vote is for FF come hell or high water, even if HQ puts up a chimpanzee in any given constituency. Most of them are no better and they owe their 90,000 grand a year salary plus expenses to the party(many of them owe it to the party HQ for having shafted the local cumann!) , therefore they will NEVER revolt on any issue of principle. They only squeal on issues of pork.
FF do NOT need your party Dan. They have the option of the independents and the PDs, and they also have a last ditch option of Labour. In short, you will not be able to hold them to account. They will make some token efforts on climate change and transport, but they will never make the tough choices because the whole ethos of FF is to funk out of all the hard choices, putting them off til another day. If , say, FF had 75 seats, the Greens had ten and the antipathy between FF and Labour was as intense as it appears to be, then you could drive a hard bargain with them. You could demand serious action on climate change. You could rebalance the investment ratio from roads and cars to more public transport, including a Luas for Cork. You could demand a reduction in the numbers in Dail Eireann and a partial introduction of the list system to reduce the influence of parish pump politics in our most centralised of national parliaments. They would cave in on most of these issues because they crave office at all costs (power having been ceded to special interests a long time ago, cf Independent Newspapers again). I would be all for the Greens entering negotiations if such a scenario arose following the election. But unfortunately this is not the case and they will take you for a ride.
Please Dan. Do not go into government with these gombeens. They see you as a useful PR stunt to boost their green credentials, but their backers are anything but. You can change Irish society for the better from the Opposition benches than from an utterly compromised position in Government. Look at the contrasting performance of the PDs in the last two adminstrations. Your situation is similar to the latter and you will be annihilated at the polls in 2012.
And for the love of God Dan, do NOT waste your time in that rubber stamp talking shop known as the Seanad. You do not need it and Cork needs you. All the best, Thomas
Well it is usual to say that hindsight is a wonderful thing, but this poster did not need hindsight to predict what was to come.
The only thing he got wrong was that annihilation was to come in 2009.
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Originally Posted by 18 Brumaire
