Parties can’t resist promising the Sun, Moon and Stars

CHARACTERISED by photo-ops and one-up-manship, General Election 2011 is the political equivalent of professional wrestling — full of fake theatrics and risk management to lessen the chance of electoral injury.

If ever we needed proof that politicians will do anything to get elected, we need look no further than the pages of our newspapers where grown men perform the kind of stunts we might reasonably expect to see on satirical TV shows but not listed in the CV of a future Taoiseach.

Snogging dogs, turning sods, kissing babies and risking life and limb for a fake exchange with a swimmer at the Half Moon off Dublin’s South Bull Wall is par for the course in a campaign where the most sensible of men — and it is mainly men — have lost the run of themselves.

Informed debate plays second fiddle to soundbites and party policies are liberally littered with sweetners as parties sell their souls for votes in an effort to tempt an increasingly confused electorate.

Yes, this is the SMS election and by this I do not mean a mobile phone short messaging service or any sort of sexual deviancy. I refer instead to the uncontrollable impulse of ordinarily sane men to promise the Sun, Moon and Stars at every opportunity to voters who would rather lay down and die than vote along party lines.

I witnessed it first hand at the launch of Fianna Fáil’s agrifood policy when party leader Micheál Martin was asked why had the party not promised farmers the Sun, Moon and Stars while in power. “Well we have,” he answered, leaving one wondering what was left in his arsenal.

The drip feed of impossible and improbable promises from Opposition parties is offensive to an electorate aware that the country has long gone down the Suwanee and that there is little or no hope of fulfilling what’s on offer.

The long list of sweetners — help for those in negative equity, a root-and-branch overhaul of the political system including vouched Dáil expenses and 50% longer sitting time, a pledge to renegotiate the IMF/EU deal, the roll-out of high speed broadband, job creation — is reminiscent of 1977 when Fianna Fáil promised a whole raft of new economic measures in a desperate and successful effort to get elected.

In 1977 the measures included the abolition of car tax, an end to domestic rates on houses and a promise to reduce unemployment to under 100,000 because FF believed it needed something dramatic if it were to win the election.

No amount of drama could win Fianna Fáil the election this time around which is why Micheál Martin has taken the reverse position of offering a manifesto with “no gimmicks” and no spending commitments — to do otherwise would be pointless when everyone knows FF splurging brought us to where we are.

The main Opposition parties, on the other hand, continue to offer the Sun, Moon and Stars with their eyes on the prize that has eluded them for the best part of 14 years, although ironically, they need do nothing dramatic to win it.

Promising to place the emphasis on spending cuts over tax hikes by whatever hair-splitting ratio or to spend X amount of time extra in the Dáil chamber is largely irrelevant to an electorate for whom the over-riding concern is change. Change is the real deal-breaker. Those who fail to offer it will fail.

In the meantime we have the daily hilarity of party leaders prostituting themselves to the paparazzi in increasingly outlandish photoshoots as they vie to outshine each other on the pages of the nation’s newspapers, shamelessly posing with dairy herds, cakes, cheeses, bunches of bananas, fake babies, in chemists, in laboratories, in hairdressers, in bookies, with dancing dogs, in trouser pockets, in boxing rings, belting sliotars, browsing market stalls, on farms — basically, anything to guarantee the kind of publicity money can’t buy, in the hope floating voters will buy into it.

The sad part or the funny part, depending on the colour of your humour, is that we all see through it and no amount of cutsie or humorous posing will snag a voter who is jobless or homeless or penniless and remains unconvinced that your party will do anything to change that.

So save your breath on the next doorstep and don’t promise the Sun, Moon and Stars because after that, there is nothing left, except perhaps Kepler-10b.