We are pleased to publish the following contribution to DISCUSSION and invite comment or articles from anyone who wishes to express a view. Articles are published according to the guidelines of the Editors and do not necessarily reflect the views of CPPC, they are published in order to encourage investigation and discussion on the issues facing us.
THE REPUBLIC OF IRELAND 2012, WHERE TO FROM HERE?
The true meaning of a Republic is that, ‘Supreme Power is held by the People or its elected Representatives or by Elected, or Nominated, President…’
This in effect means, ‘The People are the State’
The first duty of Government is to protect the State and, given that this is supposed to be a Republic, where the People are the State, was the failure of government to protect the state, leading up to and including the economic collapse and the Bank guarantee, not Treason? I contend that it was.
With the people left to pick up the tab for all of the corruption and the criminal negligence of those in power from 1997 to 2011 and with the opposition, incompetent or uncaring, standing idly-by, it is obvious to me that our current system is not protecting the People, but protecting the Status Quo.
Is it not obvious that our system has failed? Ninety years on we have failed to build our population, have failed to halt the life-sapping haemorrhage of our youngest and finest, our very future, out of Ireland?
Is it not obvious that we have failed because we’ve never had a plan, not even a bad plan, to work towards? With populist political parties, of the ‘Do Anything, Say Anything to Attain Power’ variety, and never with an overall plan, how can we have ever hoped to build a nation?
The ruinous consequences of bought Votes in General Elections, where the desire for the Mercs, Perks and Pensions was placed above the future of our people, is the shameful legacy of ninety years of the failed political experiment that is Ireland, 1922-2012.
The current Electoral, and Whip, System is Anti-Democratic and has stifled any chance of our ever achieving the true meaning of a ‘Republic’.
Open Elections and access to our politicians in constituency ‘Clinics’ creates the illusion of democracy but it is false, a veneer, the reality in this so-called, ‘Republic‘, is very different and the effective power of the People has been usurped by a corrupt political system in line with the wishes of vested interests of the powerful and wealthy.
Where the dissenting voice of Elected Representatives can only be heard behind the closed doors of a Parliamentary Party Meeting, and where your elected Representative has been reduced to little more that a Lobbyist, you’ve been disenfranchised, and you may just as well not have cast your vote at all because you’re not living in a real democracy.
I contend that the political system that has evolved here, by design of indifference, flies in the face of the aims of our Founding Fathers and has turned it’s back on the aspirations outlined in the very document that was to have been the Blueprint for a people free at last to fulfil their potential in their own country, The 1916 Proclamation.
“We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland, and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible. The long usurpation of that right by a foreign people and government has not extinguished that right, nor can it ever be extinguished except by the destruction of the Irish people”
Well, thanks to our populist political system of buying Votes and pandering to vested interest, we’ve lost our sovereignty, we are not in control of our own destiny, the destruction of our people is at hand and our rotted, corrupt, political system is responsible and has to be held to account.
We have to start again.
Colm Lynch, Nov. 10th 2012
