The innate spirit of generosity and reciprocity that has made up rural life in Ireland is coming to the fore to balance the cut and thrust of adversarial politics.
Farmers compete at market but they co-operate to get there.
Civil war politics may be moving on at last as
we celebrate the hundred year anniversary of the 1916 Rising that also gave
rise to the circumstances of their formation. Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, the
two major Irish political parties founded from each side of that divide, will
not go into Government together to make the only possible cohesive majority in
the Irish Dail. It appears they will, however, support each other in ensuring a
working government can be formed. The Irish Dail is coming together in a Meitheal. It
seems that Micheal Martin, the leader of Fianna Fail, will support Fine Gael’s
outgoing Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, to be the first Fine Gael leader to return for
a second go at the role (even if he steps down mid-term as he has long
proposed) and lead a minority government made up of his own members of the
parliament and a number of independent parliamentarians, Irish T.D.s.
The Members of
the Dail are working hard in committee at putting together a framework for a
new way of working in a parliament that will be much more collaborative and in
tune with the spirit of the Meitheal that forms an instrinsic part of the fabric of Irish history, society and psyche. The farmers came together in community Meitheals
to bring the harvests in or to assist in barn or shed building and similar
ventures. A new structure for the Dail aims to allow and support responsible
participation by all members of the House, and enable them to contribute more
through debate and committees to government. The innate spirit of generosity
and reciprocity that has made up rural life in Ireland is coming to the fore to
balance the cut and thrust of adversarial politics. It won’t make the
adversarial nature of politics go away and it should not. But it has the
potential to contribute a long needed balance and so allow for a much better
use of all the members of the Dail by putting their resources at the day to day
service of best possible government.
If you haven’t
watched Borgen it’s time to get out the box set. This television series on the
forming and re-forming of minority governments in Denmark has become part of
the national conversation in Ireland, mostly thrown in by politicians, in the
last week. I had thought I was one of a small minority of people watching it
here. Now it turns out the politicians
have been quietly viewing all along - or maybe they’ve only just begun. The
cynics scoff at the notion of a new politics. However, as one member of the
panel on the Late Debate said on radio last night, it may have been Eamon Ryan
of the Green Party who made a great contribution to the discussion on
constructive oppposition, ‘Why can’t we change our mind-set from that
entrenched Irish way of doing things and do what the Scandinavians and others
are doing? We might even find we can do it better.’
It is part of the
wisdom of Fianna Fail, as well as their only real option at the moment, that
they will not go into government with Fine Gael. To do so would be a step too
far - with historical rivalries wagging the tail of the dog. This will
hopefully be a much more desirable first step that will bring about experiences
in working together – already well begun in recent Dail Committees, including the Banking Enquiry
into what happened on the eve of the Bail Out - and do more to fade out the
rivalries of civil war politics than any forced co-operation in a hot-house Cabinet
would do.
We are a
creative people. We can do this. It is a time of unprecedented creative
endeavour in Irish Politics. The electorate have forced the change continually
promised but not delivered. Research indicates that human beings are happiest
when they are rising to a manageable challenge and bringing a solution to
fruition as Mihally Csikszentmihaly describes in his book Flow –the Psychology
of Optimal Experience. This is a good time for Irish politics and the journalists
having to catch up as they are coached by those participating in discussions to
change the discourse. ‘Well if you don’t mind, I don’t think that’s the
language we should be using. It is more appropriate just now to talk in terms
of partnership.’
There’s some
floundering going on but that has got to be good language to be moving towards
at the start of a new millennium. There couldn’t be a better memorial to the
leaders who produced a Proclamation to initiate an Irish State than to change
the language of politics to suit the times we live in now and to shift from a
conflict consciousness to the resurrection of the imagination of the Meitheal. Farmers
compete at market but they co-operate to get there.
Yes, it is a time
for rural Ireland to contribute its best while they hold a good hand of cards.
It is argued the rural vote ensured the last government didn’t return. That
thought helps to focus the minds of those elected on putting together a new
kind of government and making sure they don’t return too soon to ask the
electorate to vote again. They might not be forgiven for that. We tend to like
Meitheals.
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