Ian Paisley wants to pretend that in Northern Ireland, the European elections are a referendum on the Belfast Agreement. Bertie Ahern wants to pretend the elections in the Republic are a referendum on Ireland's membership of Partnership for Peace. A real referendum is being held on the day of the European and local contests in the South, but it's not about PfP. It's on the constitutional status of local government.
This referendum is one of the best-kept secrets in Irish politics; even Noel Dempsey, who's in charge of the project, seems too embarrassed by the lack of local government reform to say much about it.
If you think that all of this adds up to confusion compounded by silence, rhetoric and cunning, you're right. The tactics come naturally to leaders of Fianna Fail and the Democratic Unionist Party.
Mr Paisley and his anti-agreement colleagues make no bones about their pretence. The people of Northern Ireland voted on the agreement a year ago. The Assembly members they elected had campaigned on it. The latest opinion polls show continuing support for the agreement, continuing concern about what would happen if it were to be abandoned.
But the DUP wants them to vote on it again - and again and again until they get it right.
This time the electorate will also be choosing the North's three members of the European Parliament. So the DUP theory is that if Dr Paisley holds or increases his vote and Jim Nicholson of the Ulster Unionist Party loses support, Dr Paisley is free to claim that his position on the agreement has been endorsed.
Whether or not the theory holds, defeat for Mr Nicholson would lead not only to the rejection of David Trimble's leadership but to the collapse of the agreement.
To Dr Paisley and his colleagues, all elections are about one issue and only one; it's an approach they share with fundamentalists everywhere.
Now, though, the British and Irish governments, supported by the SDLP, have given the the DUP the opportunity it wanted - at a critical moment for Mr Trimble's leadership and the agreement.
At their meeting in Downing Street a fortnight ago, his pro-agreement colleagues decided that Mr Trimble could be left to fend for himself. It was a remarkable repeat of a mistake made at Sunningdale in 1973. Then, Brian Faulkner, clearly vulnerable to attack for his agreement to share power, was further exposed when he was persuaded to agree to a Council of Ireland.
Mr Trimble, too, faces tough opposition, some of it from inside the UUP. To expect him to share power with Sinn Fein without decommissioning - or any serious commitment to its completion within the year - is to ask him to do something that neither government would dream of doing.
Mr Ahern had held the line of opposition to what he memorably described as an armed peace for several months before the Downing Street conference. What caused him to change is not clear. Was it the persuasiveness of Mr Blair, with his belief in the exercise of political will so vividly described here last week by Frank Millar?
Or was he convinced by advisers who saw only political wreckage on the home front, feared more bad news in the polls and recommended a return to traditional lines on the North?
By the same token, was it the triumph of traditional appeal over common sense, or an unfortunate tendency to follow patterns set by his mentor, Charles Haughey, that got Mr Ahern into his latest jam over the promise of a referendum on PfP?
It was one of the few specific promises he made before the general election in 1997 - and it had the hallmarks of a Haugheyesque swipe at the centre-left coalition: the notion that it was suspect on neutrality was bound to go down well with the troops.
Now, however, the centre-right coalition has blandly announced that Mr Ahern has changed his mind about PfP and that it isn't necessary to hold a referendum on membership after all. The issue needed to be discussed. A national debate was promised. It hasn't happened - unless you count a Fine Gael private member's motion and a few statements in the Dail.
But then, when have such issues been aired? Dick Spring's White Paper on foreign policy provoked discussion both before publication in 1996 and for some time afterwards. The paper, which doesn't promise a referendum, covers much more than PfP in its 340 pages. It begins provocatively and ends with a promise which hasn't been kept.
The opening claim is that "Ireland's foreign policy is about much more than self-interest"; the promise, on page 340, is that the series of public seminars which preceded the paper's publication would continue afterwards.
But apart from neutrality or PfP, the only foreign policy issues which have attracted political or public attention in this State have been those which clearly come under the heading self-interest.
And the series of seminars, like the national debate, has been forgotten. The 70 per cent of people who think there ought to be a referendum on PfP have been told they'll have to make do with the European elections.
But as the powers of the Parliament increase and Ireland's prosperity grows, it might have been expected that this year's elections would reflect both changes. In a more influential parliament, we need to hear more about our parties' roles in their respective groups - Socialist, Christian Democrat, Liberal, Green, Union for Europe or United Left.
We are still given to seeing life in simple terms of one set of national interests versus another. In our case, national interest has always been equated with the interests of farmers.
It's no longer a realistic view of Irish politics and it certainly isn't how the groups listed above see their roles.
As for the issues grouped under the heading "development co-operation", this State, which has seen the bad days and is now enjoying the good, is simply a disgrace.
We should pause and remind ourselves of the guff of the last few years about the Famine, one of the great European disasters of the last century; we should listen to the trumpeting of concern for the people of the Balkans now.
Then we should ask how the public show compares with the official record of our aid to developing countries, and why our voice on such issues as debt cancellation is drowned in the chorus of cynical conservatism that excuses neglect.
It's only fair to say that the RTE radio programme which regularly reminds us of the neglect - Rodney Rice's Worlds Apart - is substantially funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs.
For this, too, is foreign policy; and ought to be part of a national debate. It isn't, and it isn't part of the European elections here, and unless things change, you won't hear many Irish voices raising the issue in the European Parliament.
As it is, the most memorable image of the week was of Rodney Rice talking to a woman called Mama Choma in the Tanzanian district of Ulanga. She talked about the prosperity that the gift of an Irish cow had brought her. Nearby, in a dark hospital ward, six women occupied two beds. The one who was not moving had just died of malaria.