From Unity, 26 May 2007

The mood is for change


As the final days of the Irish general election campaign draw to a close it is clear that it will be a close result. That both reflects and raises the political temperature. Despite concern about the loss of political engagement, an all-time record of almost a million television viewers tuned in to make their judgement on Bertie Ahern and Enda Kenny when they met in debate as the front runners for Taoiseach.
     As in the recent Northern elections, it is the basic issues of employment, health, pensions, youth, housing and transport that are on the agenda. Concerns over privatisation and racism also cross the border. Even more than the smell of corruption that just will not leave Fianna Fáil and its leader, it is the complacency and opportunism of their politics that is fueling a desire for change.
     As the Communist Party pointed out at its congress last year, the economic, social and cultural changes of the last decade have not been grasped as opportunities for social development for all. The pursuit of a right-wing economic policy has predictably seen the rich just get richer. Ireland has become ever more closely tied in to the capitalists’ and bureaucrats’ club that is the European Union and the new world order of Bush’s warmongering America.
     Under the one-sided constraint of social partnership, wages have been kept down, and public spending on social welfare, health and education continues to lag behind other countries. In a timely reminder to the electorate, last week’s publication of the World Health Organisation’s Statistical Year Book showed Ireland spending less on health than any other western European country.
     Faced with the rising challenge of Fine Gael, Ahern has made it clear that he is prepared to deal with any party that is prepared to help keep him in power. A return to his alliance to the right with the Progressive Democrats is his preference, but he is quite prepared to lean to the left if the Labour Party was to co-operate.
     The line-up in Ahern’s Dublin Central constituency illustrates the full political range of contemporary Ireland: the establishment insiders of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Labour Party, and outsiders such as the Green Party, Sinn Féin, and the independent community activist Tony Gregory. Although this election will not break the mould, it is becoming clear to increasingly more people that the future lies with the outsiders.
     That includes not only those concerned with election to public office but also those in the trade union movement anxious to reclaim unions for their members as fighting organisations. It also includes those like the Shell to Sea campaigners pushing forward on issues of social justice and the environment.
     Inside and outside the Dáil new alliances need to be forged to express and win the change that so many are now seeking across Ireland, north and south.

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