Faustian pact comes to haunt the Greens

WELL done to the Greens on a successful annual convention. Sincere congratulations on real and substantial ministerial work well done. But therein lies the rub.

Every elected representative knows that the most corrosive and seductive corruption is not cash, but ‘the chance to get things done’.

For any ‘policy-driven’ party (or individual), this lure can be almost irresistible. As clearly was the case with the Greens last year.

But what remains somewhat puzzling was the decision to buy the Fianna Fáil package — which was somewhat opportunistic and must be set within the context of the other sub-deals of an extraordinarily cynical kind which made up the total big deal.

In a context in which Bertie Ahern was willing to pay almost any price to construct what he called his ‘stable’ majority, what was offered to the Greens cost FF virtually nothing since much of it, without belittling what the Green ministers may have done, was going to happen anyway.

Within an alternative rainbow coalition, the Greens, according to the rules of negotiation, would have got at least as much, if not more. But they would have won it, and would have had more numerical weight within that ideologically friendlier government, without pawning their credibility. A soul once sold is not easily redeemable.

In a hideous irony, what appear to be the considerable ministerial achievements of the Greens, resulting from their being ‘pragmatic’, will have the slow and subtle effect precisely of devaluing the ideal of a principled politics with which I, for one, certainly associated their party.

Do the ends actually justify the means — in the ‘real’, ‘mature’ world of 2008?

Is this what our youth should learn? And are those of us who dream of principle and honour merely ‘for the birds’? The other Blair — Eric, better known as George Orwell — knows exactly where the Greens are now. They can read their portraits in the last paragraphs of Animal Farm — indistinguishable from their ‘two-legged’ former antagonists.

Somebody else who knows needs no incidental music from Berlioz, Liszt or Gounod. He is that ominous fraternal delegate who never spoke but made his presence very strongly felt in the shadows at the happy Green convention. His name is Faust.

Maurice O’Connell

Forge Park

Oakpark

Tralee

Co Kerry