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Sean Gallagher stumbles!

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Sean Gallagher stumbles!

I have declared that I would vote for Sean Gallagher as the new president …if I was allowed to vote. But in the last debate of all presidential candidates, Sean Gallagher stumbled the first time.

Because I wasn’t able to see the whole debate, I am not exactly sure how it all happened, but seemingly Martin McGuinness declared that someone rang him and told him that Sean Gallagher collected a cheque for Fianna Fail from the caller a few years ago.

Interesting in the context of Gallagher’s repeated attempts to distance himself from any FF involvement, but not scandalous in itself. If he collected a cheque for a party he was involved and did deliver the cheque to the party, I don’t see where the scandal is. Sure it doesn’t really tally with Gallagher’s preference to be seen as unattached to Fianna Fail, but that is still no disaster.

He was an active Fianna Fail member and it would have been better to accept and admit that and then to tell people that there is no danger from an ex-Fianna Fail member as president because the president has zero political power anyway. But for some reason people in Ireland are EXTREMELY sensitive to Fianna Fail membership.

Much less so than they are to Sinn Fein or even IRA membership!

I never thought much of Fianna Fail (always found it funny that they had “fail” in the name!) and I never liked Bertie Ahern even during the times when he was admired like a god by many. But on the other hand, I don’t think either that because one party has been involved in a lot of bad things and has contributed significantly to damaging the country, that then all members are automatically bad apples.

So I still have no problem with a former Fianna Fail member as a president of Ireland, but I wish Sean Gallagher had handled the conflict better. The worst sentence was probably when he declared that he had “no recollection of receiving a cheque”. This is the wording that was used by all the corrupt or dodgy former Fianna Fail figureheads. BAD choice!

I don’t think collecting a cheque on behalf of your party is a terrible thing, but I would imagine that Sean Gallagher’s support in the presidential race experienced a severe drop in that moment.

On a side note: Interesting that the politician with the darkest and dodgiest past, Martin McGuinness, was the one that threw the dirt at Gallagher!

Elections, Politics, President, , ,

Undemocratic Ireland

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Undemocratic Ireland

I am shocked about the lack of democracy in Ireland. I never thought that the level of democracy is not much higher than one of these dodgy countries where international observers need to supervise the elections. This statement might seem a little harsh to you, but read this:

1) The Constituency Dublin North has 5 seats. 3 candidates of Fine Gael were elected in Dublin North (Peter Mathews, Alan Shatter and Olivia Mitchell). 3 out of 5 candidates means that FG got 60% of the mandates, but in fact they only got 36.3% of the first preference votes. How is a system that allows situations like this a democratic system?

2) A total number of 2,220,359 valid votes were counted and there are 166 TDs, that means that each TD represents 13,375 people. But the tiny amount of 6,206 voted, for example for Richard Boyd Barrett from the ultra-left People Before Profit. He got elected and now represents more than double the voters than the amount that wanted him to get elected! Overall he got a mandate from the tiny amount of 0.28% of the voters. Should he be in the Dail? I don’t think so! I know he was not the one with the smallest number of votes, that dubious honour seems to be reserved for Kevin Humphries from Labour who just got 3,450 votes.
But the reason why I picked Richard Boyd Barrett is because his party got overall only 21,551 votes, which is 0.97%. His party won 2 seats with 0.97%, while the Greens with 1.8% and 41,039 votes didn’t get any seats.

3) Further up it is not better: Labour got 19.4% of the votes and won 37 seats. Fianna Fail got just 2% less of the votes at 17.4, but won just 20 seats.
The final result is
FG 76, LAB 37, FF 20, IND 15, SF 14, GP 0, SP 2, PBP 2
but it should be
FG 60, LAB 32, FF 29, IND 21, SF 16, GP 3, SP 2, PBP 1
In the elections this time, that result wouldn’t have changed much in the majority situation in the Dail, but the difference to the undemocratic actual vote is significant.

I can’t see how the Irish voting system can be called democratic!

Elections, Politics, , , ,

It’s all over – Let’s get started!

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
It’s all over – Let’s get started!

Finally the election (or most of it) is over. The ballot papers are nearly all counted and while there are still 12 or so TDs to be decided in a few constituencies, we know that the new Taoiseach will be Enda Kenny and that he most likely will form a coalition with Labour.

The Fine Gael win was impressive, but Labour’s and Sinn Fein’s many seats in the Dail mean that Ireland moved to the left and I am not too impressed by that. I prefer a center/liberal/social society, but not a socialist society.

Fianna Fail’s loss was impressive as well, but look at it this way: A party that ran the country into the ground in many aspects still got approx. 20 seats out of 160. That is still quite a high number! So many people still think that Fianna Fail is a party that should be in charge, which is rather shocking.

Now it is over to Enda Kenny! The Dail will meet on 09 March, so he has another 8 days to sort out his government. I am still not convinced that he is suitable or will be good as a leader, so he has to show us now that he can build a government and that he will choose the right people for his cabinet.  So, let’s get the future started. A future hopefully with more accountability and with a less self-serving attitude among the TDs.

Elections, , , , , ,

Elections can be fun!

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Elections can be fun!

Elections and all the turmoil around it can be fun when you let good comedians or odd ordinary people at it. I found two brilliant snippets.

The first one is “Enda’s Ear Piece” where Enda is briefed via ear piece in the middle of the TV debate:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mJ_7SqKxGI&feature=player_embedded

And the second one explains why Anarchists will vote for Fianna Fail:

Hilarious! ;-)

Elections, , ,

Disappointed!

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Disappointed!

Tonight’s Leader’s Debate on RTE1 was the first I saw live. (The other two I saw only partially.) …and I was not impressed with the future Taoiseach.

Enda Kenny did NOT know his facts, he was aloof, arrogant, not in the slightest passionate and – like a broken record – talks about his 5-point plan constantly. The guy on TV tonight is definitely not want as my “leader”.

Having said that, Micheal Martin is not much better. He did impress me this evening, though. He is passionate and knows his facts, but what I can’t get over is why he never cared enough about the facts before and while he was a Minister in the previous governments. So, a NO to Micheal Martin, but there is potential in a few years time if he sorts out his more or less useless party.

That leaves Eamonn Gilmore: He was taking on Micheal Martin and was cosy-ing up to Enda Kenny. My problem with Gilmore is his past. Labour sounds some where slightly left of centre, but Gilmore’s roots where in the party “Democratic Left”, which then merged with Labour. So he would be more in the socialist corner of Labour. And since the  the current economic situation can – in my opinion – not be solved with socialism, he would be a problem if in any powerful position.

Bottom line…AGAIN!!…I would not know who to vote for!

Elections, , , , , ,
 
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