As I sit down to write this post, Fine Gael's website tells me there are 16 days 4 hours 30 minutes and 56, 55, 54, 53 seconds to election day. For Eamon Gilmore and Micheál Martin a mere thirty minutes stands between them and the electorate, as they partake in the first televised leaders' debate on TV3. In my last post I commented on Enda Kenny's chairman of the board style of leadership, however the joke doing the rounds now is that he is the empty-chair man of the board. This of course is because he is refusing to attend tonight's debate due to personal animosity with Vincent Browne who is mediating. RTÉ announced this morning that, 'Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny is to take part in a public meeting tonight in Co. Leitrim around the time of the TV3 leaders' debate.'
Fianna Fáil have done their best to give this story legs, (the above picture taken from Fianna Fáil's website) and though it is true that for some voters Enda's absence is a grave insult, for most, this story is running out of steam. In the last hour an Irish Times poll suggests that Kenny will not suffer for his failure to attend.
But the media love debates. Heck, I love debates. Last year I live-tweeted all three UK leaders' debates and found the format conducive to such observational zingers as:
Brown reformats axis of evil: "Chain of terror." Gearbox of fear? #leadersdebate
Clegg: 'can we move beyond this political points scoring?' Someone should remind him where he is. #leadersdebate
But is it important? In 2002 Michael Noonan (then FG leader, now Finance spokesperson) won the debate versus Bertie Ahern but still Fine Gael were brought to its knees in electoral terms.
In 2007, newspaper consensus on the morning after the debate was that it was 50-50 or at worst for Fine Gael, Ahern won on points. Bertie began nervously; focus on his personal turmoil worried him, but Enda let him off the hook, citing the tribunal investigating Ahern as ongoing. Since then there has been some retrospective analysis done, and it is now the commonly held belief of many that Kenny performs poorly in debates.
On the flip side, I've heard it said that Gilmore can handle anything Vincent Browne can throw at him. This merely underlines how unfortunate it is that the presenter and chairperson should feature so prominently in the discussion. #vinb must change his style to facilitate a fair debate to inform and benefit viewers.
But if the debates themselves fail to move the needle then what of the media reporting of debates and the campaign itself? The Sun newspaper continued to inform the electorate today by sending a chicken to a Fine Gael press conference; a presser that Kenny looked comfortable and performed well in.
Picture from Bryan Dobson
Take this tweet from @RTEElections:
"FF’s Darragh O'Brien says FG has been making increasingly personal attacks on Micheál Martin in recent days. #ge11"
RTÉ are an impartial news organisation and the media outlet through which the majority of the Irish electorate access their information. Why, in that case, report a he said, she said story. All Fianna Fáil have in their locker is to attack and play on the fear of change. Whether or not O'Brien's assertion is true, merely saying it (and subsequently reprting it, verbatim) reinforces the idea that FG are engaged in dirty politics (albeit Irish style, which thankfully resists the poisonouss personal attacks that disenfranchises American voters and was the catalyst for Obama's win for the Democratic nomination and General Election, because of his bi-partisan approach). It brought to mind Newstalk's current advertising slogan, "get the news without the State-run spin."
In spite of the continuing FG PR gaffs, this time there will be no panic or talk of replacing the leader. Fine Gael will make up the majority of the next government. Fianna Fáil's desperation to cling to power is manifesting itself in what has been a negative and underwhelming campaign to date.
Fianna Fáil have already lost the battle for the hearts of the electorate and if as Fintan O'Toole outlined today, they have also lost the battle for their minds. FF's campaign exists inside of a credibility vacuum, so when Micheál Martin says, 'few parties would have brought in the kind of budget cuts [we] did on the eve of an election,' it smacks of the delusional. The Fianna Fáil government that delivered the budget of December 2010 was like a spokesperson for the IMF/ECB. FF turned the sovereign government of Ireland into a PR firm. Today Martin said of their manifesto:
“In drawing up this manifesto I set a clear limit. There are no new spending commitments, there are no gimmicks and there are no poll-tested sound bites targeted at different sections of the population. The reason for this is simple, the money is not there.”
If the money was there would FF be awash with gimmicks and vote-getters?
On day 7 of the election campaign, the three main parties' focus was reform; political, electoral and public-service.
For Labour "it is time for a fundamental review of our constitution." They are proposing "a constitutional convention, a coming together of all strands of Irish society to redraw our Constitution. The constitutional convention would include experts and specialists, but would also include individual citizens, randomly chosen to serve in much the same way that we choose juries."
Their 90-member 'constitutional convention' will have an 'open mandate', and "thirty of its members would be drawn from the Oireachtas, 30 members would be academic or practicing lawyers and others with experience or expertise from non-governmental associations and organisations and 30 would be ordinary citizens. The mandate would be to review the Constitution and draft a reformed one within a year."
Labour, like Fine Gael, favour a single chamber, directly elected government and both parties outline in detail the reasons for the abolition of the upper house.
Labour also outline how they would increase the frequency with which the Dáil sits, saying there will be "a 50 per cent increase in Dáil sitting days. Dáil Éireann will in future meet four days a week. There will be a summer recess of just six weeks and significantly reduced breaks at Christmas and Easter. We will abandon the practice of providing a “mid-term break” – a full week off at St Patrick’s Day and Hallowe’en."
Other unexceptional reforms such as involving public representatives at an earlier stage of the legislative process and "restrict[ing] the use of guillotine motions" are listed but these are the sort of "reforms" that are more bark than bite. Oh and they will ensure that Dáil standing orders provide a minimum of two weeks between each stage of a Bill," with the caveat,"except in exceptional circumstances." For which I read: whenever we feel like it. And therein lies the problem with electoral reform manifestos. They are bullshit. Real political reform must come from the government of the day. Some of Labour's reforms can be boiled down to, we'll do business with more humility or we'll listen more.
Of all the outlandish promises made by parties during an election campaign, electoral reform is the easiest to abandon when in office. Unlike the UK leaders' debates, where a specific, tangible electoral reform policy took centre stage i.e. voting systems, in Ireland there's a more general, lets reform our broken politics. It is understandable that in the wake of FF's rein, where it is apparent that at Cabinet level in particular, there was either a reluctance or an inability to listen to ordinary people and see beyond their own self importance, that Labour may want to expand the discourse between the body politic and the citizens whom it serves. But that must be balanced with leadership. Many of the electoral reforms contained in Labour's brief are open-ended, talking of a need to consult the public at every turn and are therefore vague. There is, of course, some detail but it s not headline grabbing and refers mainly to the technical day-to-day running of the Dáil. This lack of glamour, though, does not demean it - after all, the more efficiently and transparently our parliament works, the better the chances of restoring public confidence in politics.
There are also policies that will make voters scratch their heads and think, huh? Such as Labour's proposed introduction of 'a role for the Ceann Comhairle in deciding whether a Minister has failed to provide reasonable information in response to a question." They don't already do that? They really should do that. But considering the speaker is usually taken from the government benches one could argue that this is a case of style over substance or good intentions with little practical application.
Within the Labour proposals, there is undoubtedly a sense of the National.
"Government long-term goals will be clearly stated and communicated to the public service and citizens. The factors and factions influencing the formation of these goals will be identified. Actions to achieve goals will be capable of measurement and a midterm report on performance in relation to the goals provided."
When one visits Fine Gael's website, one is confronted with a story, the headline of which reads, "Micheál Martin has zero credibility after he takes €90K to leave Cabinet."
The accompanying video of Enda and Lucinda Creighton holding signs aloft outside Leinster House reading, "DOWN WITH THIS SORT OF THING" and "CAREFUL NOW" respectively, rams home that FG are morally outraged*.
* DISCLAIMER: WARNING VIDEO MAY NOT HAVE HAPPENED.
Stepping back (slowly) from the surreal, one then notices 'The New Politics,' a 101 page booklet published by FG, which begins by stating; this is the "most ambitious programme for political reform since the 1930s. Fine Gael, the party that created the State and declared it a Republic, will build a New Republic in Ireland" - at least that will get some of the unemployed construction workers back on the job for a while - "where trust is restored in our democratic institutions and the concerns of the Citizen, rather than the elites, are placed firmly at the centre of government."
They go on to say, "Fine Gael’s starting point is simple: political failure lies at the heart of Ireland’s economic collapse."
FG love 5-point plans. They love them almost as much as they love Collins. That's why I was struck by the following statement: "The New Politics is built on four key pillars:" Four! These points consist of a single chamber Oireachtas, a new Dáil (for those of you without Junior Cert Irish this is not to be confused with FDR's new Deal), Open Government and Empowering the Citizen. In case that's too much for you they even included this graph, to help you visualise the complexities of their 5 point....sorry 4-pillar plan.
Or as Enda succinctly puts it. “the answer for me is both simple and profound. Before we were a Tiger we were a Republic.”
Fine Gael, via twelve appendices, do go into some detail of their plans and identify the specific articles of the constitution they intend to reform. They also include a draft bill, entitled 'Open Government Bill 2010'.
I have outlined two of the three main parties' pledges in some detail. I enjoyed reading them, political reform is an issue I put a lot of stock (beef stock) in, this election. I have no such appetite to discuss Fianna Fáil's plans for political reform, as I believe, more than any other issue, this arena is where they have the least credibility. After 14 years in government, the reason is self evident. If you would like to read about some of Martin's reform proposals you can do so here.
P.S. Since I included screen-grabs from FF's and FG's websites, here's one from Labour's:
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