Don’t be frightened by those who hold power

For many years, the people of Ireland have lived with the reality of the Catholic Church putting the institution before the rights and lives of the people who make it up. Priests have been shielded, moved and protected to the detriment of children who were abused and their families.

Now, Ireland finds itself in the grip of a new institution but the echoes of the Church’s willingness to ignore harm to the individual in favour of the wider institution are echoing loudly from Brussels, the Belgian heart of the European Union.
The Government, elected by the people, are not so much servants of the people in the standard democratic sense but caretakers in situ to implement the orders they receive from Europe. On May 31, the people of Ireland will go to the polls and vote on the Fiscal Compact Treaty.
Enda Kenny has stated that the vote is more important than a general election. Eamon Gilmore was quick to state, upon returning from a party in Paris, where no doubt smoked salmon and champagne were available to himself and his socialist comrades, that the vote cannot be deferred. The outcomes of the Greek and French ballots are fascinating in their results and their implications. This is particularly the case when compared to the Irish election, which saw Fianna Fáil wiped out and the current coalition installed.
In the two recent ballots in Europe, there has been considerable change. Sarkozy has fallen and is the first one-term president in France since the 1980s.
In Greece, the mainstream parties have been sidelined in favour of extreme parties from the left and right of the political spectrum. All in all, it is not a stretch to say that there has been fairly major change in both countries.
In Ireland last time around, we certainly saw history being made with the near demise of Fianna Fáil as a force in the Dáil but in terms of policy and real change for the people, absolutely nothing happened. Gilmore’s ludicrous line about “Labour’s way or Frankfurt’s” was airbrushed out as an embarrassing piece of electoral bluster and the newly elected coalition partners quickly endeavoured to make it business as usual.
As was clear from the trading floor in the run-up to the recent elections on the continent, the markets generally expect that elections in such times as these will bring real change. So it might have been expected that when the people of Ireland made their democratic choice of new leaders, the people they elected might act in the best interests of those who put them in power. In reality however, the new government towed the line in Europe and the people of Ireland paid, and continue to pay, the price.
Francois Hollande was elected president of France on the promise that he would seek to address the issue of growth and have the fiscal compact altered accordingly. While he didn’t quite resort to the kind of hyperbole that Mr Gilmore did, his pronouncements were sufficiently brazen to make the markets jumpy. In the days since his election however, he appears to have mellowed.
He spoke to Angela Merkel and went to visit her immediately upon his inauguration and has no doubt been set straight on what he can and cannot demand. Ironically, the markets have responded well to his election. If, as it seems may be the case, Hollande is allowed a little wriggle room to encourage growth and not engage in the Europe-wide orgy of austerity which has become de rigueur, then this is seen as a positive thing. It’s been so long since any pro-growth measures have been mentioned or mooted by anyone on the continent that for the novelty factor alone they are notable.
Without wanting to seem overly cynical, the people of France will soon be treated to the same kind of reality the people of Ireland faced in the aftermath of the last general election when the will of the European institution will supersede the democratic will of the French electorate. Similarly, the people of Greece have been warned that if they eventually manage to cobble together a government and that group fails to fully execute the terms of the EU/IMF bailout, their nation will be bankrupt. Elections are all well and good but if the democratic will threatens the European institution, then it will be punished.
This is also the source of the implied threat facing people when they enter the voting booth on May 31. If Ireland does not vote the right way then the institution will be angered and will not hide its vexation. What punishments will be meted out has not been made entirely clear but that there will be rebuke and retribution is not to be doubted.
When dealing with institutions of the kind mentioned above, the first thing to be ground underfoot are the individual lives which make up the whole. The institution becomes divorced from the people who populate it and works as a self-preserving entity whose only goal is survival, whatever the cost in real human terms.
The French election caused a stir on the markets because of that nation’s relative size and importance within the European institution, whereas the attitude to the forthcoming Irish ballot merely reflects the nation’s peripheral status in both the geographical and political sense.
The closer the ballot comes, the more inclined I am becoming to urge people to stand up to the institution that is damaging their lives in a way the democratically elected leaders of the country, whether through cowardice or institutionalisation, seem utterly incapable of doing.
When the time comes to vote in the individual booth, every person with the right to cast a ballot must make a sovereign choice based on what they believe to be the best thing for Ireland, not a choice they have been intimidated or frightened into making by those who, in theory at least, hold power in the country.