Government by, for, and of the people

WITH a general election looming in the New Year, is it not time that we, the electorate, are finally given the opportunity to participate in a truly democratic election.

Ever since the decline of the Fianna Fáil overall majority one-party government we, the Irish people, have been governed by botched-together, after-the -fact coalitions — coalitions we were never asked for, or voted for in the first place, and who have subsequently run this country with varying degrees of failure and ineptitude.

After-the-event coalitions are not truly democratic and are not the intended outcome of our proportional representation electoral system.