Political stability - Election is path to new beginning

IT IS impossible to see how this besieged country’s interests are served by this Government deferring the inevitable.

Their Mugabesque devotion to power has become a destructive force set against the great efforts and sacrifices being made to try to convince the world that we are capable of eventually running our affairs and repaying our huge debts.

That Mr Cowen and his circle imagine they can, despite having squandered their credibility through repeated incompetence and gross miscalculation, impose cuts of €6 billion in the next 12 months without a new mandate goes a long way to explaining why Sinn Féin had to go to the courts to have bye-election belatedly called in Donegal. Our situation has indeed become bizarre when Sinn Féin, not so long ago absolutely indifferent to the need for any electoral mandate at all, turn out to be the defenders of the democracy our Government prefers to keep silent.