Don’t let bureaucratic busy bodies make politics even more boring

ONE interesting tussle which takes place among the political parties in the opening days of an election is the battle of the lampposts at Government Buildings.

The political parties generally rush to get prime position on these poles. Opposition candidates take a particular pleasure in taunting the Government by having their posters hover over the seat of power.

But the poster battle at Government Buildings is to be no more. Dublin city council officials, in a bizarre case of bureaucratic over-reach, have commanded that posters no longer hang on Dublin's Merrion Square and they haven't stopped there. City council officials have taken upon themselves the power to decide how election postering can be conducted for the forthcoming local and European elections.

Over the last three weeks a strange public notice has appeared several times in some of the national daily newspapers. It takes up about one-eight of a broadsheet page setting the council back a good few ratepayers' euro.

The notice specifies the dates on which the council claims posters can be put up. It lists streets on which the officials have decided posters must not be erected. It specifies a maximum height at which posters can be placed and requires that posters must be on recyclable material. It even claims to set a limit on the number of posters on each pole at a maximum of two per candidate.

This public notice is a crazy piece of bureaucratic nonsense. It has no standing at all in law. It is unprecedented. Nothing like it has been deemed necessary in previous elections and I am not aware of any councillor in the Dublin area who has claimed the power or felt the need to impose such restrictions for these elections. The restrictions are an unconstitutional interference with freedom of speech and discriminate in favour of outgoing councillors.

I have been trying to establish what legal authority the council claims for these restrictions. The council confirmed that it had no power to make by-laws on election postering and admitted that the matter had never been discussed by the full council. A city council spokesperson accepted this week that these poster restrictions had no legal effect and described them as a "gentleman's agreement" between the political parties.

However, when pressed further, it became clear that the restrictions were in fact devised by council officials. They were not discussed with the political parties at national level but were run past the leaders of the various party groups on the council.

Even this "gentleman's agreement" has no standing. The leaders of the party groups of sitting councillors have no power to impose an agreement which restricts the freedom to campaign of hundreds of non-sitting candidates who will contest the very seats of the sitting members. The larger parties cannot agree rules which discriminate against smaller parties and independent candidates.

Sitting independents cannot set a limit on the poster activity of non-sitting independents. In fact sitting councillors have a vested interest in imposing poster restrictions because sitting councillors have less need for postering than newcomers. It is the newcomers who most need to establish name and face recognition in the weeks leading up to polling day. And, of course, city councillors cannot make decisions to restrict European election candidates. All this could be dismissed as nothing more than bureaucratic 'busybodyness' if it were not such an unprecedented and constitutionally dangerous interference in the election campaign. Thousands of euro have been spent on these notices and this week the council diverted some of its staff to take down some election posters.

In addition, confused information to candidates and differences in the starting dates which it claimed to impose for postering in the two elections has done political damage to some parties and has left local election candidates at a distinct disadvantage to their European counterparts.

Dublin City Council's move is a further example of a politically correct and unhealthy trend to take the drama, fun and excitement out of elections.

We will ultimately pay a price for this sterilisation of politics with an even greater lack of public interest and increasingly low turnouts.

Quite apart from the colour they bring to the campaign, election posters serve an essential function. They communicate the basic information designed to mobilise citizens to vote and persuade them to support a particular candidate. Posters establish the candidate name, party affiliation and some sense of their profile in the voter's mind.

While some precious souls, especially in middle-class areas, might regard posters as an imposition it is worth remembering that not everybody knows what local electoral area they live in or the identity of the candidates contesting in their areas. Last week, for example, an opinion poll of younger voters showed that only one in 10 could name any of the current MEPs, not to mention the new candidates. Posters serve to fill some of that knowledge gap.

POLITICAL campaigning is increasingly expensive and competitive and good postering is the most effective and cheapest from of political communication. Restricting postering discriminates against the smaller parties and independent candidates who do not have the media machines or resources to get their message across through more expensive channels.

The arbitrary nature of the restriction which the city council is seeking to impose is illustrated by the list of streets on which it bans posters. O'Connell Street, Grafton Street and Henry Street are included in the ban apparently because they are "the busiest pedestrian streets" and "they have nothing to do with the local elections".

However, it is precisely because these streets have the highest footfall that they are so attractive to candidates especially European election candidates as poster locations. Posters are also banned in Merrion Square, Mountjoy Square and Fitzwilliam Square. It is said this is because these are Georgian squares of particular tourist interest.

However, there are more popular tourist attractions citywide where candidates can poster to their heart's content. In any case, why it is assumed tourist sensibilities are offended by knowing that there are elections going on? The litter acts grant a specific exemption for posters that "relate to" an election. There is no start date for this exemption period. Candidates make their own judgment call on how early to put up posters early posters catch the voters' eye, but putting them up too early can be counter-productive.

Even if the council had the legal authority to take down election posters, why should it bother? This isn't exactly a life-or-death issue for Dubliners.

Given Dublin's chronic traffic problem, the planning and waste management challenges which the city faces, and long waiting lists for housing repairs, the demands upon the time of the Dublin city manager and his deputies must be many. There are also litter problems of greater significance in Dublin than a few extra election posters going up early.

Surely their energies and ratepayers' money could be better spent on these issues. If we needed proof of how badly the balance of power between the politicians and officials in our local system is out of skew, then surely this is it.

The council should take its nose out of the election campaign and preserve its energies for ensuring candidates take the posters down after the election where the council actually has policing powers.