Reputations have long since gone up in flames

“An election is coming. Universal peace is declared and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.” – TS Eliot

It’s Monday evening and things hang in a very grubby balance in Ireland. International news reports, on the other hand, are telling us all that young men in Egypt and Mauritania have set themselves on fire in acts of public, political protest. They are said to be modelling themselves on Mohammed Bouazizi, the 26-year-old Tunisian whose act of self-immolation is credited with sparking the current unrest or crisis, depending on the news outlet, in Tunisia.
The act of setting one’s body aflame in political protest is an extraordinary one. It demands belief and extraordinary courage. The motivations for mutual immolation being displayed by the Fianna Fáil party in Ireland at the moment cannot be said to stem from such laudable ideals.
Indeed, the actions of both Micheál Martin and Brian Cowen, however misjudged, are more about self-preservation than self-sacrifice. The Fianna Fáil heave with regard to Brian Cowen and his leadership in the wake of the golfing revelations has been truly ugly to watch. BBC news bulletins carry reports, with mispronounced names, details of shambolic skulduggery across the planet, complete with indecision and misdirection.
However, all in all, these reports have tended to miss the main point. Perhaps they have done so because the reality is too ludicrous to consider or maybe because it has been lost in the maelstrom of nonsense but either way they have done so. The leader of the main party of government was to be replaced by somebody else as party leader, while continuing to lead the country as head of the nation. To write it makes it clear just how ludicrous it is as a concept. Perhaps it may not be in other democracies, though they would be rare but in terms of Ireland?
Thích Quang Đ’c is the world’s most well-known example of politically motivated self-immolation. According to his entry in Wikipedia, he “was a Vietnamese Mahayana Buddhist monk who burned himself to death at a busy Saigon road intersection on June 11, 1963.
He was protesting against the persecution of Buddhists by South Vietnam’s then administration. Photos of his self-immolation were circulated widely across the world and brought attention to the policies of the regime.
The images captured of his suicide went on to garner worldwide attention and political change resulted. The internal, self-destructive party wrangling within Fianna Fáil has garnered some international airtime but their suicide will bring about little by way of political change.
There are many losers in this situation. Cowen certainly, Martin, Hannafin and whoever else was waiting in the wings will all count themselves hard done by but they have the rest of their lives to deal with their own part in the demise of their dreams. By contrast, there are many in Fine Gael and Labour who feel they have backed the right pony. In actuality, the real losers are the Irish public.
Watching the RTÉ Frontline special on Dún Laoghaire this week was one of the most dispiriting experiences I have ever had to endure. It was wall-to-wall bickering, cliché and political soft mouth. Although transfixed by the depressing nature of the vista, I could not shake the feeling of being trapped in a lift with a series of buttons reading doomed, oblivion, catastrophe and failure.
In terms of human feeling, it is difficult to begrudge Labour and Fine Gael their utter delight at Fianna Fáil’s self-destruction but in actual fact they must remember they are not just having their turn on the merry-go-round. Endless queues of unctuous Fine Gaelers seem prepared to flirtatiously repel Labour talk of a coalition, preferring instead to boast of their ability to gain an overall majority.
Their ‘red’ partners protest that the next government will be “Labour led”, all the while ignoring the fact that the voting public will experience little change by way of their unseemly frottage come voting day.
The tone of RTÉ coverage has also taken on the tone of ‘when Fine Gael is in government’ when addressing members of the Opposition. If the Opposition were offering anything by way of an answer in response to the financial fiasco, this might be acceptable as plain election banter as it has been in the past but in the current situation, options, actions and solutions are what are called for.
It is simply staggering how many people in Fine Gael, Labour, Fianna Fáil and others trusts in the “intelligence of the Irish electorate” all of a sudden. If they trust so completely in the intelligence of the Irish people, will they abolish all rule of law?
Will they abolish a parliament and the need for such incredibly intelligent people to be ruled by others? If not, then they should respect the intelligence of those whose vote they seek and dispense with such patronising platitudes.
In years to come, students of politics will study the election of 2011 as a sea change in Irish politics, as the point when the formerly dominant Fianna Fáil party slumped to an all-time low in the polls, destroying the Greens and the PDs along the way, following an obscene decade of greed at the trough of power.
However, it is difficult to shake the feeling that they might also study the forthcoming election as the greatest missed opportunity in modern Irish politics. The time the smug Opposition f***ed up the greatest opportunity in their history to write themselves into the annals.
Opinion polls are public, the ballot box is private and what a person does in secret is often the most delightful and ingrained of all.