Madam, – I read with some amusement Sarah Carey’s article on the need to ban polling during elections (Opinion, February 24th), on the basis that “polls affect behaviour”.
Surely, any external stimulus affects behaviour? Should we ban press conferences, leaders’ debates, election posters and leaflets, and indeed political reporting of any kind during elections, too? Hmmm. Now that I think about it, it doesn’t sound half bad. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Surely your report (Front page, February 24th) about Pat Cox advising Fine Gael cannot possibly be accurate. Mr Cox, the guru of the Progressive Democrats, was (and presumably still is) the apostle of “light touch” regulation, and promoter of the “let the market rip” philosophy. Both of these policies were a direct and primary cause of the present catastrophic state of the country.
I had thought that the PDs and their appalling impact on Irish society had been properly buried. Are we now to see a former PD-FF coalition replaced by a PD-influenced Fine Gael government? Have we learned absolutely nothing from the last disastrous decade? – Yours, etc,
Madam, – I am an Irish citizen living in Sydney, Australia. Two weeks ago I wrote to the Irish Embassy in Canberra because I wanted to know how to vote from abroad in Friday’s general election. The reply I received contained one sentence: “You need to be resident in Ireland to be eligible to vote”. My mother did some research in Ireland and told me she received a similar answer.
I deserve no sympathy as I left Ireland voluntarily two years ago and have previously had a rather lax attitude to my democratic duties. However, it is extraordinary and shocking that the thousands of people who have been forced to leave Ireland for economic reasons are not allowed to vote in the election. They are thereby denied the opportunity of contributing to the result that they believe is most likely to improve the economic condition of the country and allow them to return.
This seems even stranger to me as I am living in a country in which voting is compulsory for all citizens, even for those who are living abroad. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – I am a recently departed MA graduate from Dublin, now living in New Zealand, trying to find employment unavailable at home. I wish to express my frustration and disappointment at realising my disenfranchisement and that of Irish citizens living abroad.
The importance of the current election, and the return of high levels of forced emigration highlights the issue like never before. We should be able to have our say in how the country is run. Many of us, like myself, would still in Ireland were it not for the current state of affairs. We did not want to leave; we had to. If Ireland, as a nation, is going to get back on its feet, it will need the support of the thousands of its citizens leaving its shores every month.
What is being asked for is not something unusual. Britain, France, Germany, the US, Mexico, Iraq, among more than 100 others have provisions in place allowing for voting abroad in their parliamentary elections. It is a right to vote. By passing through a terminal or port we are not absolved of our ties or duties to our home. We are being forced out by repressive circumstances, and if we are to return we should be able to have a say, an impact, on the course of development Ireland takes.
The thousands leaving are part of a delicate transition in Ireland.
Depriving them of their vote is removing the voice of some of those most affected by what is happening right now. It is thus devaluing much of the relevance of the entire process. Our voices should be heard at this crucial moment in Irish history. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Guy Woodward (February 23rd) might like to consider the vast discrepancies between the experience of young people in an admittedly undemocratic China, and those of young people emigrating from an admittedly democratic Ireland. In the former, economic development continues apace; the minimum wage increased in 2010; and the government is acting to restrict bank lending in a property bubble.
Aware that I am inviting a deluge of ink, I am inclined to invoke Deng Xiaoping’s aphorism, that it doesn’t matter whether a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice.
With regard to democracy, however, I am at one with the people of China in being refused my constitutional right to elect those who rule my country. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Having read the Fine Gael five-point plan, and the Fianna Fáil four-year programme, one wonders what is the difference between the main parties, if any. All main parties are prepared to force private banking debts on ordinary taxpayers come what may. We are in for the same austerity measures – plus some – no matter who governs for the next five years.
When the dust settles after this election, the ordinary taxpayer will be asking what has changed. I am reminded of a joke which was doing the rounds when the financial crisis broke in 2008 about the difference between Iceland and Ireland. The joke now is, what is the difference between FF and FG, one letter and about six months? – Yours, etc,
Madam, – While listening to candidates proclaiming an end to local politics, I wondered what would happen if our constituencies were not divided along geographic lines. The day when a geographic delineation was necessary to allow the candidates communicate with their electorate by getting to every church in the area has passed with the advent of new media.
Surely we have the means to pick 43 equal-sized groups from the population at random and post them their polling card with a “constituency number” on it which they could then look up the candidates for in publications like your own. Each constituency would then have exactly four TDs.
This would force all candidates to take a far more national view and study all issues at a national level, amongst other useful side effects. – Yours, etc,