OPINION: Nothing radical is being proposed but at least a debate is beginning on our political system
A GROUP of political scientists got together recently and organised a conference on the political system for last Monday at which academics, journalists, a few politicians and interested other citizens got together and agreed nothing at all. There was no agreement even that there was any problem with the political system.
Some felt the system was just fine and should not be tampered with. Not much anyway.
There was that slight tinge of pompous self-importance about the meeting on Monday (talk of Chatham House Rule, by which is meant simply that what was said in discussion was “off the record”) but there were several interesting contributions from political scientists: Michael Marsh, Richard Sinnott, Michael Gallagher, Eoin O’Malley, John Coakley, Gary Murphy, Liam Weeks, Aodh Quinlivan and Muiris MacCarthaigh (their papers soon will be available on the website www.politicalreform.ie).
However, one of the speakers contended that the political system was/is a roaring success – he didn’t quite put it that way but that was the tone. He said the political system brought us the boom years and the Northern Ireland peace process, so it can’t be that bad and can’t be blamed for bringing us the coming bust years. Don’t change anything, or at least not much.
A lot of time was spent on telling us what a good idea it was for TDs to hold clinics and that what the people wanted most from TDs was attention to local issues (hardly surprising since TDs are largely powerless to do anything else).
A TD participant told us how the system was being changed shortly by having the Dáil sit at 2.00pm on Tuesdays rather than 2.30pm and adjournment debates were being brought forward an hour so that they might get covered on the RTÉ television’s Nine O’Clock News.
The conference hardly got around at all to discussing how irrelevant parliament is to the economic and banking crisis that now threatens our society and how parliament is unable to hold the Government accountable not just for its culpability for the crisis but also for the measures it is taking to resolve the crisis.
These measures may do far worse damage to this society than the damage previously inflicted by Fianna Fáil, the Progressive Democrats and the Greens. Parliament is helpless to do anything about this or even inquire meaningfully into what the Government is now doing.
Yes, some inquiries are helpful but they have no power to command witnesses or documents and the committees conducting the inquiries are woefully under-resourced.
The Government gave a guarantee to the depositors with and lenders to the financial institutions on September 30th last that may cost this society €20 billion.
And they are now giving further guarantees which may cost even more billions. Wouldn’t you think the Dáil would have a role in determining whether this is a good idea or not? That parliament would be able to explore alternative options to resolve the banking crisis? That parliament would have a role in exploring options on economic policy? A role in deciding how we deal with the coming requirement to take another €5 billion either in more taxes or expenditure cuts?
It seems clear now that the Government is gearing up to cut social welfare payments on the basis of a decline in the cost of living, without taking cognisance of the fact that the cost of living for those dependent on social welfare has increased.
The major contributor to the decline in the cost of living has been the decline in mortgage payments and many of those dependent on social welfare don’t pay mortgages.
How wealth is distributed in this society is a matter decided by government, but this central issue of State policy is never discussed by parliament (except occasionally by inference) and certainly never decided.
Isn’t it a problem that parliament has no meaningful role at all on any of these crucial and now pressing issues?
I think the failure of our political system is more profound. Democracy is supposed to be a system of government whereby the people are sovereign, which means that the people take the important decisions on how society is run.
But the form of representative democracy we have at present largely evades the people, aside from five-year general elections, at which the people are asked to decide which job-lot of politicians should be given the big jobs in which they take all the decisions largely without reference to the people. Talk of a participatory democracy whereby the people would vote directly on issues, such as a plan to get us out of the present crisis, is dismissed with derision – the people are too stupid for that.
This conference was a genuine first effort to get political scientists and others talking about the crisis and, hopefully it will be the first of other such initiatives. But how about inviting the people who matter on all this? The people.