LAST SUNDAY a heart-warming 90 per cent of Tunisia’s 4.1 million registered voters flocked to the polls peacefully to elect the country’s first democratic government.
Apart from countries like Australia where voting is compulsory, such remarkable voter participation is very rare, and largely only “recorded” by totalitarian regimes to give pseudo legitimacy to their rule – Muammar Gadafy once preposterously claimed a 100 per cent turnout in a constitutional referendum.
In Tunis the vote was something entirely different – an eloquent expression of the engagement of almost every citizen in the freedom the Arab Spring has brought them and in the obligation that democracy imposes on all to make it a living reality, by participating.
By way of contrast, today we will be very lucky if the 70 per cent who turned out in February’s general election bother to vote. More likely, barely half of us will go to the polls – two of the last three presidential polls, in 1997 and 1973, saw turnout under 48 per cent, although the fierce contest between Mary Robinson and Brian Lenihan in 1990 did push it up to 64 per cent.
Turnout in constitutional referendums has, if anything, been yet worse (except when they coincide with other votes). In 2001, only one-third of voters came out to abolish the death penalty, to authorise us to sign up to the International Criminal Court, and to vote down the first Nice Treaty (though 59 per cent turned out in 2009 to approve Lisbon II).
Today it would be sad for our democracy, dysfunctional as it may be, if the widespread anger at, and desire to see reform of, the political system is manifested in apathy rather than engagement. That mood, which both propelled Fianna Fáil out of government and has seen a surge in support for Independents in the presidential election, is for many essentially about reclaiming politics for the citizen – and there is no more basic way to do that than by voting.
Not least because today’s referendum questions, notably that on public inquiries, are also about refashioning key dynamics in the political system – in one view, that of the Coalition, it is to do with enhancing the role of public representatives in calling institutions and individuals to account; in another, about an unhealthy undermining of individual citizens’ rights. Whichever perspective one shares, the result is important; to vote, critical.
There is a long, malign tradition in this country of hurlers on the ditch. In politics, no less than sport. And, yes, there is much to criticise about a system and a political class that have clearly failed us. But, as the badge says “Wearing badges is not enough!”. Grumbling from the sidelines while failing to engage even minimally to the extent of casting a vote is also not enough. It is all too easy to say “none of this matters”, there goes The Irish Times moralising again, and of course there’s something on the telly ... Excuses, excuses.
And, stay-at-home-citizen, next time you complain about this State’s loss of sovereignty, pray explain why you failed to exercise your own sovereignty on October 27th, 2011. There’s still time to vote.