Picture of the week
Barcelona’s Carles Puyol holds up the Champions League trophy following his side’s convincing 2-0 victory over Manchester United in Rome last night. Photograph: AP Photo/Luca Bruno.
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Are there alternatives?
On Monday, Trinity College Dublin hosted among others, Dr. Louis Kasekende, Chief Economist of the African Development Bank. Dr. Kasekende gave an interesting talk on Africa’s economic past, current condition, and her prospects.
Most interesting for me was his economic view of things. Africa has had a difficult relationship with the ‘developed world’. Since the movement to end colonisation, there has traditionally been a desire on the part of Africa’s elites to see a change in the structure of the global political economy. Thabo Mbeki played a huge role in changing this. He was probably the single most important figure in the establishment of NEPAD (New Partnership for Africa’s Development), which essentially drops the demand for radical change in the structure of the global economy and brings Africa in line with ‘mainstream’ economic thought on development. The same thinking that brought about the IMF’s structural adjustment policies which were roundly condemned by African leaders about a decade ago.
Fast forward to yesterday. Trinity again hosted Dr. Luiz de Mello, a Senior Economist with the OECD. His public lecture was essentially on the same topic as Dr. Kasekende’s, only Dr. de Mello was talking about Brazil. The basic gist of the de Mello lecture was that Brazil is doing really well because the country has embraced structural adjustment and it will continue to do well provided it embraces the free market neoclassical approach to economics even tighter. As only an economist of that ideological hue could, de Mello basically reduced every challenge and success in Brazil to factors affecting supply and demand, best handled of course by the market. At least that’s what it sounded like to me. Like Africa, not too long ago, Latin America was on the forefront of the movement to reform the global political economy. Today, not only has most of the region seemingly accepted the status quo, it is exporting apostles of the free market doctrine to other regions.
What really got me thinking was my brief conversation with Dr. Kasekende after his talk. When I pressed him on the fact that NEPAD represents a very real ideological departure from the past, his response seemed to be a Thatcheresque TINA (there is no alternative). When I suggested that proposed African alternatives that never saw the light of day were now being overlooked by Africans themselves, the response I got sounded like TINA said differently.
Which brings me to the heart of the matter. Are there alternatives, or was Thatcher right? I know that alternatives, in the form of ideas on paper, exist. But supposing that ‘conventional wisdom’ takes a certain stance on an issue, can the minority, or a weak majority, propose an alternative that gets a fair hearing? Or will they eventually have their representatives subsumed into the thinking of the powerful? Depending on how those questions are answered, the position taken by Kasekende, de Mello and hundreds of thousands like them represents either a convergence of thinking on the right answer, or a Foulcauldian process at work (power defining knowledge).
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Me, unplugged
Reluctantly, I’ve decided to share a link to an interview I gave to a Dublin community radio station at the Iveagh Gardens Africa Day event. My reluctance stems from the fact that I’m not the best speaker in the world. I hope I write a lot better than I speak. Stylistic and performance issues aside, Sally asked some important questions. If you can get past hearing “I think..” so often, I think you’ll find some of the issues that are often discussed on this blog were raised in the interview.
The interview is available here.
I should also mention that, in my opinion, community radio stations are fantastic entities. They may not be as prestigious as the big stations, but I think they do a better job of ‘public education’ than their larger rivals. Near fm managed to interview quite a few people at the Iveagh gardens. I found the one with the Minister for Overseas Development, Peter Power, especially interesting.
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Why we vote
Listening to the radio today, I caught a couple of shows that had candidates in the upcoming local and European elections defending their positions. The candidates were being questioned on everything from immigration to the significance of the Lisbon vote. Turkey as potential EU member state, China’s human rights record, trade agreements with Israel, overseas development aid, and the local economy were all on the cards.
The whole time I couldn’t help but wonder why we were all wasting each other’s time. At the end of the day, isn’t the real question ‘what can you, politician X, do for me first, then my family, my community, my county, and then the country?’. I can’t help but think that the rest is just window dressing. Honestly, are our representatives elected on the basis of very much besides the perception that they can do things that benefit us more than their rivals? And in terms of that benefit, doesn’t our desire for cheap clothes (and cheap everything else) trump our feelings about events that are taking place on the other side of the world?
Driving through Dublin over the weekend, one candidate’s posters had the word ‘jobs’ in bold. If all he says on the campaign trail is ‘jobs’, even if he can’t spell C-H-I-N-A or find Nigeria on the map, I’m willing to bet my savings that he will get elected. If I’m right, why the pretense with all these other issues? Is it so important that we give the appearance of concern even where it doesn’t exist?
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The Rosebud Syndrome
Reading Stephanie McCrummen’s article, I couldn’t help but think of what Robin Wood called the ‘Rosebud syndrome’ in reference to the film industry. According to Wood,
Money isn?t everything; money corrupts; the poor are happier … the more oppressed you are, the happier you are, as exempli?ed by the singing “darkies” of A Day at the Races (Sam Wood, 1937)…
McCrummen follows a Kenyan immigrant who decides to return home with his family, leaving the creature comforts of the United States. The way her piece reads, her subject swaps the rat race for true inner joy and peace. That may be true, but in the words of a filmmaker I know, the stories that are left untold are just as important as those that are.
It’s true that the recession has led many migrants around the world to pack their bags and return to their countries of origin. It is also true that the quality of life for some is better in their home countries. But there are some serious consequences of this growing trend that need to be highlighted.
For one thing, remittances, the money that migrants send home, comes to more in sub-Saharan Africa than overseas development aid. The African Development Bank is concerned about what will happen in the coming months as that income decreases. The loss of remittances will probably lead to reductions in the numbers attending schools or with access to health care. As for the returnees themselves, not all will have accumulated savings. Some will return without very much money and may end up as burdens on their family networks where they were once bread winners. The simplistic, idyllic picture painted by McCrummen will not be every returning migrant’s experience. It might only apply to a minority.
Any story that ‘shows the other side’ of Africa is a breath of fresh air. That said, it still remains true that the developing world will be disproportionately affected by this recession … even though it contributed least to the financial shenanigans that brought about the downturn. In that context, and bearing in mind the fact that the world is somehow capable of mobilising massive funds to protect big business, we shouldn’t ‘Rosebud’ the poor. I would hate to think that there are people out there who think that the migrants who are being forced to return will mostly be returning to paradise. That’s too much of a Hollywood view of the world to be realistic.
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Africa Day celebrations in Dublin
Random images from the Africa Day celebrations at the Iveagh Gardens in Dublin, 24 May, 2009. Photographs: Bryan Mukandi.
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Picture of the week
A young child, internally displaced due to the Pakistan Army’s offensive against the Taliban in Swat, rests after collecting food rations at the Chota Lahore relief camp in Swabi, Pakistan May 20. Photo: Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images.
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Buggin’ Out
Giancarlo Esposito as Buggin’ Out in Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (1989).
Commenting on a recent blog post, Erica wrote the following,
…I find it pretty ironic that wherever there is a post on this blog about immigration, there is an huge response, much of it hostile, but the response seems to be far more muted when the discussion turns to the politicians who
1) set the immigration laws in the first place, and
2) ran the economy into the ground. Instead of harassing Kenyan ticket-takers on the train, perhaps the Irish public would be better off harassing the TDs and ministers who drove the country over a cliff.That really got me thinking about an academic paper I wrote recently. It was on film and change and in it, I looked at Spike Lee’s 1989 film, Do the Right Thing. What most struck me about the film is the fact that people tend to prefer to deal with the symbolic, as opposed to the real issues. In Spike’s film, Buggin’ Out (Giancarlo Esposito) focuses on photographs on a wall because that’s easier than confronting the factors that have led to his community’s economic and political disempowerment.
It’s not just Buggin’ Out. We’re all like that to some degree. It’s easier to take on the symbol, be it a ticket-taker or photos on a wall, than the giants that are the true cause of our difficulties.
Terray, explaining Istvan Bibo’s observations, puts it well.
Bibo’s central hypothesis was that when a community fails to deal with a problem that challenges, if not its existence, then at least its way of being and self-image, it may be tempted to adopt a peculiar defensive ploy. It will substitute a fictional problem, which can be mediated purely through words and symbols, for the real one which it finds insurmountable. In grappling with the former, the community can convince itself that it has successfully confronted the latter. It experiences a sense of relief and thus feels itself able to carry on as before. - Terray, E. 2004, Headscarf Hysteria, New Left Review, 26.
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Human nature
Human nature is an odd thing. Take the Guantánamo detention centre for example. A lot of people were rightly upset with the idea of a prison in no-man’s land that wasn’t subject to either US or international law. A place where the inmates were captured or abducted and then incarcerated without a trial, and in some cases, without even the prospect of a trial. No sentence, no communication with the outside world, totally vulnerable.
So a new president comes along and decides that Gitmo has to go. Great. His political party and the outside world rush to help end this abominable prison? Not exactly. This is where human nature kicks in. The idea of people being wrongly imprisoned offends our sensibilities. That righting those wrongs may cost us something … that’s not a reality we like to face up to by nature.
European governments have been resisting US pleas to take in Gitmo inmates who are found to have been innocent but who would not be safe in the country of their origin. Amnesty International in Ireland has been trying to convince the Irish government for a while now to take a prisoner. I asked someone from Amnesty if, were there a referendum, she thought the country would vote to accept that prisoner. Let’s just say I wasn’t convinced by her answer, and I’m not sure she was either.
In the United States, even the democrats (in both houses of Congress now) have voted against providing their president with the funding necessary to close Gitmo. The same people who cheered Obama on for announcing its closure would rather Gitmo stayed open, than face the prospect of ‘terrorists’ in their prisons. Forget the fact that there are already a number of proven terrorists in American jails. The suspicion of Al-Qaeda membership obviously endows a person with supernatural destructive powers.
According to the New York Times, 1 in 7 released Gitmo prisoners returns to ‘terrorism or militant activity’. Some will read this and see justification for their refusal to help put an end to Gitmo. I think that’s just human nature engaging in its most instinctive act — self-preservation. While I have no evidence, I think the longer Gitmo stays open, the angrier innocent detainees will get, and that 1 in 7 figure will rise.
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The former Minister for Integration on ‘resentment’ towards foreign workers
Conor Lenihan, the former Minister for Integration, was just on Prime Time. He was insisting that the kind of blatant racism that foreign workers have experienced as the recession has worsened is no great departure from the past. Wow.
I understand how the politics of the situation work. RTE shows a video clip that humanises a social problem - in tonight’s case, the new challenges faced by foreign workers as the economy has worsened. They then bring on a government representative as well as someone from an appropriate NGO, and encourage a fight. The job of the government representative is to defend the government at all cost. That of NGO representative, to promote their cause as effectively as possible.
The minister stayed on script and made a claim that lay somewhere between the ‘it’s just a few bad apples’, ‘things have always been like that’, ‘you’re exaggerating the problem’ and ‘problem, what problem?’ arguments. Feigned ignorance with a little aggression and finger pointing is as good a way as any to defend the team from justified criticism. And that is, God willing, as close to a personal attack as I will go.
In case the minister still follows this blog, having spoken to a couple of candidates for local office from the immigrant community recently, I can assure him that the kind of racist slurs on the program are not that uncommon. I can also assure him that there has been a definite turn for the worse in how immigrants are treated since the magnitude of the recession became apparent. My last bit of assurance for the minister, the signal that most immigrants received from the announced changes to the work permit scheme was that they are no-longer wanted. But I’m sure he knew that already.
So as to avoid the criticism levelled against Prime Time’s filmmakers by the minister (that they were overly negative), I’ll repeat what I told a couple of friends recently. I love this country. I suspect most immigrants feel the same way, hence the desire to stay. And hence the frustration at the former Minister for Integration’s television performance.
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Prostitution and power
Lately, the Republican Party in the US has come under a lot of criticism. The bulk of it comes down to the perception that the Republicans aren’t evolving or moving with the times. They are seen by some as holding on to values that the country has moved away from. The suggested antidote? Change.
But should they? I vaguely remember the film Pretty Woman. When Richard Gere meets Julia Roberts (who plays a prostitute), he asks, “What’s your name?”
“Whatever you want it to be,” she replies.
That makes sense. She’s a prostitute after all. Maybe I’m just an idealist, but isn’t a political party supposed to be different? Aren’t they supposed to start off with a core set of values and principles that they stick to, as opposed to transforming into the mould of the client’s fantasy?Here’s my idea of how the party system should work. Party X stands for agro-based policies and wants everyone to wear green all the time. Party Y wants to build a ‘knowledge-based economy’ and wants people to wear futuristic, silver suits all the time. Party Z openly has no clue about the economy but thinks everyone should be able to wear whatever they want to wear. I get that things change and that at some stage a party might decide that an agricultural economy isn’t sustainable. They can change that specific policy goal. But if wearing green clothes is a core value, if you change that because the pollsters say that’s the only way to get into government, then how is that any different to Julia Robert’s on-screen prostitution? Shouldn’t you just stick to your values in the hope that one day the electorate will identify with those values again? If they don’t, what’s wrong with a party deciding that hey have run their race and closing shop?
After the last Irish general elections, the Green Party was being advised by commentators to join the government because then, they would have some power. They got their power, but arguably at the expense of their pre-election values. I wonder if it isn’t better to stay out of power if the cost of acquiring it is moving away from who you are? It might mean that you’re never in government, but if your values are only held by a minority, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Isn’t it better than changing and leaving that minority stranded, without representation?
Likewise, though I think the Republicans need to figure out what their values are, I hope they don’t end up becoming what they think the pollsters want them to become.
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A thought
A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.
A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, “This is not just.” It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, “This is not just.” The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.
A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, “This way of settling differences is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
- Martin Luther King, Jr. (4 April, 1967), Beyond Vietnam — A Time to Break Silence
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Picture of the week
Egg stains on the panel behind finance director John O’Donnell and chief executive Eugene Sheehy at the AIB egm in the Bankcentre, Ballsbridge, Dublin yesterday after eggs were thrown at the top table by a digruntled pensioner.
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Ticking time-bomb
US President Barack Obama has reversed his earlier decision to make public photographs detailing the abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan. The change followed intense pressure from the military and intelligence communities.
Following US commentary on this issue, it’s interesting to see how often the ‘ticking time-bomb’ hypothesis comes up. It asks what you would do if there was an imminent terrorist threat. Let’s say some group hides a nuclear weapon somewhere in Dublin and all the intelligence community knows is that it is set to go off soon and they have captured one of the terrorists. Assuming that the terrorist refuses to co-operate, and millions of people are in imminent danger, would you torture the suspect on the grounds that they might give you the information necessary to find and deactivate the bomb?
Some months ago, a human rights lawyer with years of experience working in the middle-east posed the same question to a group of us. My initial, somewhat callous response was to enthusiastically call for the suspect’s torture. It seemed like a no-brainer. Things couldn’t get any worse if the suspect wasn’t tortured, and as for the brutal nature of the process of extracting information, anyone who goes around bombing people deserves what he or she gets.
The lawyer soon set me straight though. What if the suspect wasn’t saying anything because he was being wrongly accused of something he had nothing to do with? Also, evidence suggests that torture doesn’t work nearly a well as traditional interrogation techniques. And even though we like to think that television is just entertainment, 24 has probably got a lot of people believing that the ‘ticking time-bomb’ hypothesis is a reasonable starting place for a discussion on torture, when in fact real life seldom works like that. But most important is the fact that there are serious long term implications to a decision like instituting state sanctioned torture.
That’s were the White House finds itself today. The release of photographs is being blocked because, as some have speculated, we would all then realise that prisoner abuse went beyond the actions of a few bad apples. They would also go a long way in wrecking the illusion of the US as some sort of guardian of moral uprightness. Worst of all, those photographs could sow the seeds of further violence and other forms of retaliation.
I don’t really care about what memos are declassified and which photographs end up in the public domain. I’m not even interested in whether or not they one day lock up Dick Cheney. What I want to know is if in the wake of the next big attack or scare things are done differently, or will short term gains be placed above their potential long term consequences again?
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Owning stuff
A colleague of mine, Katie, is a committed advocate of intellectual property rights. Coming from a musical background, she sympathises with those who, in the absence of vigourous protection of their intellectual property, could find it very difficult to make a living. Katie and I disagree.
I’m not sure where I stand on the liberal concept of private property. I don’t own very much, but I am grateful for the fact that my things cannot be arbitrarily taken from me. That said, I think the idea of the protection of private property as the foundation of individual freedom is fatally flawed. And this flaw is reproduced in almost all of our institutions and our thinking.
Article 17 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), for example, affirms the right to private property. Great … if you own property. Article 17 ignores people who don’t own any property. It is lopsided in that it protects those who have without discussing whether or not something should be done for those who haven’t, in order that they too may have. Although one could argue that the rest of the UDHR address those who don’t have and that article 17 protects those who don’t own property in the event that they eventually accuire some, I’m not convinced. I still maintain that the UDHR protects me, most of you, and even the likes of Bill Gates who could raise their own armies if they needed to. It doesn’t address the poor in parts of the developing world who don’t own any capital and therefore don’t have not the means to produce for themselves.
An interesting development in the property rights debate is the notion of intellectual property rights. While I’m not sure exactly where I stand on private property, I think the idea that knowledge can be owned is ludicrous. Katie argues that it incentivises research, development and innovation. My response to that is, “Humbug!” Nowhere is the folly of that thinking shown up as clearly as in the debates around genetically modified seeds, and now, in the patenting of the human genome!
There are cancer patients who cannot get genetic testing because some firm owns the patent on those particular genes. The means by which these patients can find out the sequence of a short strip of their DNA, present in almost every cell in their bodies, is withheld because of a ridiculous belief in the value of private ownership. Worse, the fact that another firm is praised for licensing out (for money) its knowledge of a differnet gene goes to show the magnitude of the problem. Ownership of knowledge isn’t being questioned. Rather, this issue is being dealt with, in the mainstream, as a question of whether that knowledge should be kept and developed by one owner, or a few more.
I think Katie and I ultimately disagree because she is concerned about the potential consequences, for everybody, of denying those with property or knowledge benef from their ownership. I, on the other hand, am more concerned about the immediate consequences of the barriers erected by private ownership - barriers to the means of a producing food as well as those to finding out if you’re more likely to get cancer.
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To vote, or not to vote…
Even though there are election posters all over my neighbourhood, for the first time in my life, I am tempted to forgo my right to vote in an election.
Non-Irish citizens who reside in the state can vote in local elections. This will be the first time that I am eligible to vote in Ireland. I’m one of those people who believe that everyone should take their civic responsibilities seriously. And yet, I’m underwhelmed.
I partially suffer from the ‘Lisbon Treaty syndrome’. Although all the information that I want on the candidates running for office, and their political parties, is readily available, I just haven’t made an effort to find it. I’m tempted to claim that the candidates haven’t made themselves available to the electorate or that they haven’t done a great job of getting their message across. But honestly, that would just be an excuse for my own laziness.
The scary thing is that of all my friends, I’m probably the one who is most engaged with current social and political issues. My apathy is nothing compared to theirs. I’ll probably end up dragging myself to the voting booth and voting for the candidate who also happens to teach my friend’s son - even if she is a member of the wrong party. If I decide that the advice of a ten year old is not the best way to pick a local representative, I might vote for a party instead. I just need to figure out which party I’ll support. As for my friends (most of whom are well educated, and about half of whom are Irish), they’ll either stay at home or vote for the family party.
Ireland definitely needs a ‘get out the vote’ campaign of note. We probably also need to address the cynicism that surrounds the political process.
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The ‘markets’
The New York Times approves of now President Jacob Zuma’s cabinet picks. And it’s not just the Times, the Wall Street Journal approve of his choice for Finance Minister as well as the fact that the outgoing one gets to remain in the cabinet.
So what? In appointing his cabinet, Zuma had to keep one eye on the international ‘markets’ and the other on the nearly two-thirds of South Africans who voted him into office. All the media concern about how he would govern and whether or not he would ‘bow to the pressure from his supporters on the left’, the very same noise that accompanied the new presidency of Brazil’s Lula, ensured that no such thing would happen. For better or for worse, every ‘serious’ economic player in the world is in a polygamous marriage with ‘the markets’. And it’s one of those old-school marriages - divorce is not an option. The only way out is to do a Cuba, North Korea or Zimbabwe and commit economic suicide.
It’s a fascinating system. The range of options that are realistically available to the Irish government for dealing with the downturn are constrained by the markets. Even if the McWilliams proposal was adopted and the euro was scrapped, Ireland wouldn’t have economic autonomy. Britain, with its own central bank and monetary policy is still bound by the conventional wisdom of the markets.
All this would be well and good if the markets were some metaphysical positive entity, some type of economic god. But they aren’t. At the end of the day, aren’t the market simply the collective wisdom of a bunch of super rich guys (and maybe the odd girl here and there) whose chief interest is the continued existence and growth of their wealth?
I actually don’t think that the greatest threat to South Africa’s poor is Zuma embarking on some radical economic policy. He wouldn’t last a week if he tried to do that. His party would recall him like they recalled Mbeki and replace him with a market friendly guy the Wall Street Journal and New York Times would approve of. No. The Greatest threat to South Africa’s poor is the possibility that their interests and those of the Wall Street Journal reading ‘markets’ may differ.
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Picture of the week
A thermal scanner shows students arriving for classes at Republic Polytechnic in Singapore May 6. Photo: Vivek Prakash/REUTERS
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Going solo
David McWilliams
I’m not sure how I feel about David McWilliam’s economic outlook in general. I’ll say this for him though, he’s not afraid of making bold suggestions. His latest especially surprised me - dumping the euro.
I’m not convinced that dumping the Euro would be a smart move. Even if all of McWilliam’s arguments hold in theory, how would the financial world respond psychologically to an independent Irish currency? And how would the rest of Europe take that kind of snub, especially in light of the Lisbon treaty rejection?
I’m not an economist. I’m probably not even qualified to disagree with McWilliams. But everything within me says that his suggestion would be a very bad idea for Ireland. Who knows, maybe it’s because I lived through a currency devaluation at the hands of a government with a ‘we can go it alone’ mentality. Unemployment didn’t fall, it rose. Exports fell as inputs that had to be imported rose to levels that made the final goods unaffordable. The circumstances were very different to Ireland’s today, but not so much that I can read the McWilliams article without having visions of worthless currency flash before my eyes.
That said, David McWilliams is probably right in two regards. There is probably a need for the kind of uncomfortably drastic action that the all governments are determined to avoid. There is also probably an economist or some other policy expert with the way out of Ireland’s economic woes who is being as actively ignored as were all those who cautioned us about the property bubble.
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Caste
An ESRI study has found evidence supporting something that most foreign workers already know. People with an Irish sounding name are twice as likely to be called for a job interview as applicants with a comparable CV whose names sound Asian, African or German. Based on the fact that where the non-Irish person comes from didn’t affect the level of discrimination, it has been suggested that the findings point more to a desire to employ one’s own than a dislike of the ‘Other’.
None of that surprises me. It’s helpful in that it shows up the ‘they’re taking our jobs’ argument. But what I’m really interested in is the public response to the findings as well as public views on their implications.
African and Asian workers have no automatic legal entitlement to work in Ireland. I’m sure that most people will have no problem with the fact that if an African or Asian person is in a job in this country, their employer couldn’t find a similarly qualified Irish person to fill that vacancy. That makes sense. But what about a German, French or Polish worker? Because they are citizens of EU member states, they have as much right to work here as Irish people have to work in Germany, France and Poland. Do most people feel that even in the case of EU workers, Irish jobs should first and foremost go to Irish citizens (with Irish sounding names preferably)? And as Ireland’s demographics change, what of all those Irish citizens of African or Asian origin, whose surnames sound nothing like Murphy or O’Sullivan?
Lately, it seems as though everywhere I turn I see the huge gaps between the noble aspirations that society claims to hold and reality. In this case, I wonder if deep down inside, we as a society really think there is anything wrong with the fact that your name plays a big role in determining whether or not you get a job interview? A friend was at a public event where, by accident, it was discovered that she is the granddaughter of an important Irish political figure. She is now being wooed by her grandfather’s party. Ireland, like many other countries, has a very real caste system in place - it’s just not as explicitly codified as India’s.
As with India, while there may be some action aimed to moving beyond discrimination and caste, I’m not convinced that deep down many of us really mind their continued existence so long as we’re not on the wrong end of the stick.
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How the country is run
Gemma Hussy had an excellent article in yesterday’s Irish Times. It’s definitely worth reading in full, but some of the lines that jumped out at me were:
We have in Ireland an electoral system … which almost ensures that a broad range of the best brains and achievers in the country will never see the inside of Leinster House, much less the Cabinet room … The electoral system imposes a lifestyle on politicians which is directly inimical to good government … The skills required to massage a constituency seven days and nights a week have nothing to do with running a small European country with an open economy.
Ministers have to spend 20 to 30 hours a week attending local functions, holding clinics, going to funerals – they’ll lose their seats if they don’t.I was reminded of this article this afternoon as I listened to a radio journalist express his frustration at the current electoral system. As far as he was concerned, the majority of the current politicians are in their positions because of either family connections or they had the kind of civil service jobs that one can always return to if the next election goes badly. Needless to say, he also felt that the system needs revamping.
I’m fascinated by Western democracies. Part of it is because Hollywood is a supreme propaganda machine. As such, people who don’t live in the West tend to believe that Western democracy is a near perfect system of government. Don’t get me wrong, a flawed system that affords people basic freedoms is superior to one which doesn’t. But let’s face it, the whole ‘for the people by the people’ thing doesn’t happen in real life. The reality, more often than not, is that the system functions first of all for the connected, and then for those who will deliver the most votes most consistently.
Harold McMillan noted that, “Democracy can live only so long as it is able to cope satisfactorily with the problems of social life. While it is able to deal with these problems, and secure for its people the satisfaction of their reasonable demands, it will retain the vigourous support sufficient for its defence.”
That makes intuitive sense to me. But then China and Russia under Putin throw up a serious problem. A totalitarian system of government, any system of government in fact, if it meets the demands of a critical mass, will thrive. Enough Chinese are happy with how that country is run that allegations of human rights abuses there provoke anger and accusations of neo-imperialism from ordinary Chinese citizens.
Maybe the problem with the Irish system of government, and that of a lot of other countries, lies in the demands and expectations of the electorate. I am dubious of the Adam Smith idea that if we all act to the benefit of our self-interest, the ‘greater good’ will somehow be achieved. And if the idea of self interest translating into the greater good is flawed, maybe we should sit down and rethink more than just proportional representation?
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Picture of the week
A woman walks down a dirt road near Labutta Township, Myanmar, April 26th. Photo:Soe Zeya Tun /REUTERS
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First 100 days
The idea that the first one hundred days of a four year presidency is any sort of barometer strikes me as foolish. President G.W. Bush, for example, was relatively popular at the one hundred day mark. Ordinarily, I would reserve my judgement on Obama’s performance to date. But, in words that would make my parents cringe, since everybody else is doing it…
I think the idea of Barack Obama as the Messiah has started to fade away. Finally. But he’s still incredibly popular and a good deal of that popularity is, I think, warranted. Obama has shown that he will think things through and he generally resists the temptation to jump at every little controversy that comes along. He has also shown a humility and desire to listen that is a welcome change from the last administration. Though some may disagree, I also think he has begun to address some of the entrenched structural issue in his country surrounding the distribution of wealth and power, as well as the role of the state versus that of the market and civil society. How far that will go is anybody’s guess, but I’m not expecting too much. Still, any improvement is better than none at all.
On the other hand, he is a politician, and I harbour all manner of prejudice against politicians. He is also just one part of a complex system of government. On top of that, his chief end is the interest of America, not that of the rest of the world.
With all of that in mind, I think the American President has started well, I wish him well, but I think it is still way too early to credibly rate his performance.
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