Unelected politicians - Democratic principles under threat

MANY a pub debate on Ireland’s economic woes has begun with the proposition that none of it would have happened if economist David McWilliams had had a seat at cabinet, or that we would recover quicker if Michael O’Leary was plucked from Ryanair and made minister for finance.

The theory that people with academic prowess or real-life expertise in business would do better at running the country’s finances than politicians with career records confined to the classroom or law library is an attractive one. But the idea of unelected professionals being parachuted into key positions in preference to people chosen by the electorate is alien to democratic principles.

Flawed though the concept and practice of democracy are, the power of the public to vote someone in and out of office is a fundamental protection against authoritarianism and is not one to be surrendered lightly. Yet two of our EU neighbours now have unelected prime ministers, a fact that has got a little lost in the breathless spectacle that preceded the departure of Greece’s George Papandreou and the dancing in the streets that followed the farewell of Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi.