Election 2011 - FF race is a dangerous distraction

WHILE he still commanded centre stage Taoiseach Brian Cowen repeatedly referred to the need to move away from the negativity and anger that chokes so much of our public conversation.

Even though he and his party are primary architects of our economic collapse, and the political pantomime demeaning us all, he is right.

But how can we? How can we act as rational, optimistic people when our Government behaves in a manner beyond even the most vicious imaginings of satirists? How can we pretend to be optimistic citizens as we drive our emigrating children to the airport? As we struggle to hold onto the family home? As nearly half a million of us wonder if we will ever again get a job? As we wonder how to repeat the miracle of the loaves and fishes with decimated wage packets?

And that is just the perspective from Ireland.

Imagine how our Carry On Killinaskully idiocy is seen in the comfortable rooms where decisions about international finance are made? The rooms where decisions about the interest rates — our modern penal indulgences — we pay are made?

How must it look that we cannot even agree a general election date? Does that suggest we are capable of running of our affairs? That we can be trusted with the kind of loans needed to pay our housekeeping bills?

More than anything else we must have an immediate return to the stability a functioning government provides if we are to meet the challenges all around us. Only an immediate election can do that.

A new beginning requires new, rejuvenated circumstances and no matter how the Finance Bill is dealt with, as it inevitably will be, we need to put the affairs of Fianna Fáil and the affairs of Government in their proper order. Yesterday afternoon, and in this ever-changing melodrama timelines are important, Mr Cowen is supported by six of the usual 15 ministers.

Half of those are running private election campaigns to replace him as Fianna Fáil leader. Two of that trio are responsible for two Government departments, one for three. Even on an interim basis this is preposterous.

If the energies being devoted to their more or less irrelevant leadership battle were focussed on the Finance Bill this chaos, and that is exactly what it is, would pass in days and allow for the prospect of a return to some sort of normality.

The importance of doing this was underlined yesterday when the European Commission warned it is vital that we quickly pass the final piece of legislation underpinning the budget.

We have been brought to this sorry point by a remote political class existing almost at one step’s remove from the struggles of everyday life. The slapstick of recent days and weeks only deepens the despair eating at any optimism we can muster. It must end now and the affairs of Government must take precedence over everything else. Even replacing the leadership of Fianna Fáil.