Waste Disposal

By AM Sunday, November 28, 2010

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Doubtless there are many punters unhappy about Pearse Doherty’s by-election win in Donegal South West. But they can hardly say it was a shock. It wasn’t even worthwhile betting on. People were queuing up to rub the noses of the dirty dogs who crapped on the country in their own mess. When the moment came they struck with a vengeance.

Doherty had won the grudging respect of a swathe of people at odds with his party when he forced the by-election which had previously been delayed by the Fianna Fail-Green Party Coalition. The government’s action was calculated political cynicism designed to ensure that democracy would not be allowed to infringe on the self interest of government parties. It was also sinister in that it allowed us to see that the democratic veneer covering the governing parties was in fact just that; a mere façade. The instinct was authoritarian and the intimation alarming: elections are something better avoided. The people as Brecht would have said must not be allowed to vote, ‘the bastards.’ The downside of that is that Fianna Fail was blitzed by a party demonstrably more authoritarian than itself. Ominous for the future.

The victory hardly signifies the reversal of Sin Fein fortunes although for now it should help stop the rot although it will not stop the Trot. Left wing thinking and discourse is now developing audibility throughout the island and sketches a future that Sinn Fein has not the slightest intention of delivering.

Sinn Fein now feels it has some credit in its pocket, rather than just a cap in its hand, with which it can go to Labour and discuss bidding for a deal that would keep Eamon Gilmore’s party out of government with Fine Gael, the likely composition of the next ruling bloc. Party leader Gerry Adams claimed the electorate had clearly rejected any Fine Gael Labour coalition. It had not and this will be evident from the soon to be general election.

Adding his now amplified voice to the party leader’s Pearse Doherty said:

I would call on Labour now to change direction. You cannot credibly argue that you are of the left when you go into bed with a party like Fine Gael who are of the right. This is a wake-up call for Eamon Gilmore and that party.

Pearse Doherty, equipped with a knowledge wider than platitudes and a good constituency worker by all accounts, deserved his electoral success on that basis alone. The margin of victory secured arguably lay in the voter saying ‘no more’ to Fianna Fail. That does not equate with saying ‘more’ to Sinn Fein who will promise more soup but served up in the same economic poor house.

As the party leader has persuasively demonstrated, when he gratuitously inserted his presence into the 2007 televised leader’s debate, he knows little of substance on economic matters, His rhetoric, cruelly exposed by Michael McDowell of all people – then the bete noir of Sinn Fein - has little appeal for people who think food first and political parties second. There is nothing whatsoever to suggest that Sinn Fein would put an end to poor house economics or do anything to halt the Cromwellian economic spectre that is rapaciously haunting the country in the form of the IMF. Sinn Fein is the party of promise that has promised so much yet delivered so little

It makes little sense for Pearse Doherty to advise Labour to refrain from entering a coalition government with Fine Gael on the basis that the latter is a right wing party. It is no more right wing than Fianna Fail yet every dog in the street knows Sinn Fein was bursting to enter government with the Soldiers of Destiny before they waved the white flag of surrender to the IMF without reference to the people in case ‘the bastards’ might vote like they did previously on the Lisbon Treaty.

What is Pearse Doherty made of? Credit to him for an effective waste disposal strategy which saw Fianna Fail routed. An untested quantity at the uppermost political level, it remains to be seen if he and his more left leaning colleagues can prevent the party leadership entering a coalition with a right wing party. If Sinn Fein somehow managed to get a greater percentage of seats than Labour in the next general election, in which Fianna Fail should be sent packing, it will without doubt go into government with Fine Gael. Doherty will then be reminded of his own words about what left wing parties cannot credibly do. If he then fails to piss in the pot, Thursday’s trudge to the polling booth will for many have been a complete waste of time and a vote.