The post-vote slump

COMMENT

IF I promised anyone reading this something then you would expect me to fulfil it. If I didn’t you would hold me to account. You might not confront me face to face but it would be some time before you forgot my slight.

It is unlikely in the extreme that you would be forced, in a set period of time, to have your hand forced to choose between trusting me again or choosing between somebody else. If you were, however, you would feel not only cheated but less inclined to accept my word than the others before you. Unless of course those other people you might be choosing over me had also betrayed your trust in the past.
Yet, we engage on a regular basis with elections. A roster of candidates present themselves to us, tell us what we want to here and vie for our vote. They expect us, as voters, to forget what they have promised before or, in some cases, remember what others have promised and remember that they have let us down. It is a quite intriguing and ultimately baffling set of circumstances when it is boiled down to its bare bones and yet most of us, with even a passing interest in the future of the country, engage with it in such a full blooded fashion it would be easy to believe that we were experiencing it for the very first time. Ironically, it is those who have participated most often, the so called grey vote, who are targeted in campaigns with the most zeal because they are known to vote more assuredly along a set of clearly predictable lines. Those seeking the votes have decided they will swallow anything along as it is dressed in the correctly identifiable rosette.
Younger, virgin voters are more sought after in recent times but they are slightly discounted to an extent because of their unpredictability and tendency not to vote. They are all very fine in theory but a candidate has to promise things to win them outside of the usual menu of political offers, so they are to be wooed either with caution or in a full blooded manner that could scare away other demographics. This tightrope is one to be approached with caution.
At the time of writing, I have just watched the final of the Presidential debates. When this column is published, there will be many hours of voting left to vie for and I’m sure the people seeking your vote will have done quite a bit to seek the mark of your pencil in that curtained booth. Whatever the result, the turnout is something that has been obsessing me in recent weeks. The candidates have been appealing to a wide cross-section of the population but they are engaging in a popularity contest. They can in fact offer little real change. This has not stopped some offering some quite extraordinary things but in this case, hopefully, those particular deviations from reality have fallen on deaf ears. Many might say the same was true of the candidates in the February General Election but if such cynicism is left to one side for just a moment, the figures for those who have voted will be of great interest.
Just over 70% of the eligible electorate voted in February to elect a government on a ticket of change, standing up to Europe and a “We Can Do It!” spirit in the face of dire adversity. How will each of those voters have reacted to the Government’s inevitable acquiescence to the real power over Irish affairs, which lies in the hands of others? Will these broken promises have damaged the back of the camel who has been undergoing intensive treatment for a severe injury for quite some time now? When the figures are published, it will be easy to say this race has not really meant anything anyway but, while this is understandable, it will not entirely explain the numbers. This is assuming the numbers will be down but if I am wrong that they will be up on the general election, then I will hold my hands up and say there is even greater cause for investigation.
If the people voting are feeling weary by the campaign then it will be nothing to the feeling of the candidates. Six of them will be feeling either devastated, relieved, pleased with their showing or just exhausted in the next week and one will be the President of Ireland. During the campaign, most will have suffered attacks publicly and more often through clandestine channels, that are beyond the comprehension of any regular member of society. They will be reeling as you read this, utterly dizzy from the campaign trail and mostly, disappointed.
Which brings me back to my original analogy and perhaps ,most importantly, to the dichotomy and fallacy within it – if we try to hold those seeking our votes to the standard to which we hold most people then they will fail miserably and, yet, at a time such as this when they are experiencing such terrible personal anguish, it is difficult not to feel for them on a personal level. This said and acknowledged, each of those who sought your vote are politicians. They all had teams behind them, whether those teams were funded and staffed by political parties or just acolytes who believed in the personal cult of the person involved. So despite their very human suffering in the aftermath of the verdict, they knew what they were letting themselves in for and did it with their eyes and minds open to the potential pitfalls.
In the very near future, somebody will be sworn in as the new President of Ireland and then fade from view to a very large extent. They will become the figurehead persona inhabited by their predecessors unless they attempt to radically change the office, in which case they will get a call from the relevant lawyers and tone down their behaviour in accordance with constitutional protocol. Whoever will lead, in theory, will be led and for those who chose today, tomorrow and every day that follows it will be business as usual aside from the face on the red carpet greeting players on two special Sundays in September.