OPINION:UNLESS YOU are mad as hell with the Government and want to vote against Fianna Fáil and the Greens, or unless you want to register support for a particular candidate or party, just to give them a bit of a boost, there is no point at all in voting on June 5th, writes VINCENT BROWNE
The elections are about nothing at all. No issues, no plans, not even a promise, aside from the ludicrous promise of a few Euro candidates to provide jobs. How, possibly, could an MEP provide a job for anybody aside from their near relatives?
On none of the parties’ websites is there any mention of a policy statement relevant specifically to the European Parliament elections. Fine Gael has a policy statement on local government reform, but what this has to do with the local elections is not evident, since local councillors have no role in making any changes to local government. None of the parties offer any policy proposals specifically to do with the two byelections.
There will be loads of chin-stroking worthies remonstrating on the scale of the abstention in these elections, and silly talk about those who gave their lives to give us the vote, and more such guff. The fact is that voting in these elections is pointless, aside from the gestures. It is yet another instance of the vacuity of what we call our democracy.
There are issues relevant to the European Parliament but, so far, I have not heard anybody even mention them. There is the ideology of the European Union, which, aside from rhetorical genuflections to a “social Europe”, is all about free markets and free trade (which is the point of the European Union project), and largely heedless about the dire social consequences of such agendas.
The free operation of markets is the engine of inequality. Almost all states, whether dominated by right-wing or left-wing culture, acknowledge that intervention is needed to rebalance the resultant unfairness. The European Union makes only a symbolic gesture to correct the unfairness which the unfettered interplay of free market forces generates.
So you’d think at least some candidates would be campaigning against the ethos of the European Union, and promising to represent a movement to change that ethos. Joe Higgins is the only candidate anywhere here that makes any gesture towards that.
The European Union also represents a retreat from representative democracy, which itself is a fairly emasculated form of democracy. This is primarily because of the dominance of the Council of Ministers in the EU institute structure, a device whereby governments can hide behind the cloak of “inter-governmentalism”, where no one is accountable for anything. A pretty vigorous campaign against that might be in order, you might think?
And there are the other ruses of the EU to enfeeble democracy, the most notorious of such recent instances being the scam whereby the EU constitution was rewritten into the form of the Lisbon Treaty, so as to avoid the tiresome process of referendums in countries such as France, Denmark and the Netherlands – unfortunately for them this device cannot work in Ireland because of a Supreme Court judgment in 1987.
The dismay at the prospect that the British people might be allowed to vote on the Lisbon Treaty if the Irish do not ratify it before there is a change of government in London is a further example of this. Cynical, manipulative, insidious.
You’d think there would be a few voices complaining about the debased democracy that permeates the European Union. Not a bit of it. (I know this will infuriate Euro-fanatics who see nothing at all wrong with excluding the masses from direct participation in EU treaty changes, on the ground that those masses could not possibly understand the importance and significance of that which they were voting on. There was a similar argument against universal suffrage.)
And maybe a few voices complaining about the creation of the European Defence Agency, the role of which is essentially to co-ordinate and assist the businesses of the European armaments industry in making even more effective the instruments of killing and of war.
Some people are very keen on this and will argue that this is not at all the role of the European Defence Agency – it is solely a peace-loving, peace-promoting outfit which all decent people should support. Have a look at its website.
But wouldn’t you think that for a country that is obsessed about neutrality (so neutral we hardly interfere in our own affairs), there would be a few candidates that wouldn’t be too keen on the European Defence Agency, and might want to have it done in?
But then, incidentally, the European Parliament has no say on the European Defence Agency – some matters are too important to allow people’s representatives have a say on them. Wouldn’t you think that even the Euro fans would be displeased with that?
In the meantime, waffle, waffle, waffle, posters, leaflets, doorsteps, hullabaloo and flannel. It’s what we call politics.