General Election 2011 - Cherish your vote but make it work

JUST as there is no such thing as a relationship that will not end there is no such thing as a date that will not arrive.

Today, February 25, 2011, has been eagerly anticipated with simmering anger — apprehension if you are a Fianna Fáil or a Green Party deputy — for over two years by swathes of a society that feels betrayed, unfairly penalised for the recklessness ofothers, lied to and thoroughly disenchanted with how politics has so dramatically failed society and, it must be said too, some politicians.

That anger has not been assuaged by that feeling essential to cohesive society that its justice system is robust enough to protect the citizens who subscribe to it from those who do not. It is an absolute outrage that two-and-a-half years after bankers destroyed our economy, as well as vast personal and public wealth, that no-one has been before the courts in connection with this treason — and it was nothing less. Even in a society where accountability is paid little more than lip service this is an almost insurmountable affront to anyone who takes the idea of a just society seriously.