Last Thursday’s Irish Examiner carried a hard hitting editorial concerning the latest episode from Bertie’s fantasy land.
Unfortunately, the writer is, like most Irish citizens, still labouring under the illusion that Ireland is a normal democracy. For example he writes;
“It is unimaginable that he thinks this kind of two-fingers-to-you buffoonery is acceptable or plausible to anyone other than a card-carrying Fianna Fáil lifer.”
Poll after poll, election after election over many decades makes it absolutely clear that the majority of Irish people are more than happy with this type of ‘two fingers-to-you buffoonery’.
The editorial goes on;
“What is at stake now is not the political career or reputation of an individual — it is the integrity of our political process.”
The integrity of the political process was completely wiped out in the 1980s when it failed, with the happy co-operation of the Irish electorate, to put the corrupt Haughey in jail.
The media and the Irish people seem to be completely unaware of a brutal reality that faces them every day.
Bertie Ahern and his fellow Mafiosi are not worried or angry about the possibility of Mahon uncovering evidence of corruption; they know that the Irish people have long ago accepted the corrupt ways of Fianna Fail despite the horrendous consequences this has for many of their fellow citizens.
No, Ahern and his fellow Mafiosi are angry by the very fact that they are being questioned at all, that there is still a minority of people out there who have not yet accepted that Ireland is, effectively, a one party corrupt State.
It’s funny that all the complaints are about the damage it is doing to politics or the political process. It’s more about the challenge to democracy itself. Politics is not democracy.
Very few people are talking about the effect on democracy. Without democracy politics is irrelevant to the majority of people, although for politicians it seems to be optional, and it is clear that the politicians concern is about politics rather than democracy itself.