Madam, - John Waters is, as always, thought-provoking in his analysis of the career of Sean Doherty (Opinion & Analysis, June 9th). However, his thesis that all the political controversies in the early 1980s were "related to the tension between the. . .clientelist model of politics and a modernising tendency" is open to question. Without getting into the particular personalities involved, a more convincing explanatory thesis is that of the simple law of political science which states that it is part of the human condition that power corrupts.
The basic ideal of a democratic republic, proclaimed in our Constitution, is that all citizens are equal and none should be privileged above any other. This is, in John Waters's own words, the basis for "the drafting of a commonly agreed version of the society we should become". When people in power seek to manipulate the system in favour of their own particular insiders the people who suffer are usually the weak, the powerless and, as Mr Waters himself so elegantly puts it, "those on the outside or on the fringes".
That is not only a logical explanation for the political tensions of the early 1980s but is a continuing tension in all democracies. It is also why in a democracy we need the "eternal vigilance" of a free press, however inconvenient it proves to be for people in power. - Yours, etc,
A. LEAVY, Shielmartin Drive, Sutton, Dublin 13.