Commentariat fails in its job

It is hard to disagree with Victoria White (Opinion, Oct 25) when she says that “our political parties are clientelist” and “our political differences are tribal”.

It is also hard to disagree with her when she says that it is a “lie” and a “pretence” that “an alien tribe called Fianna Fáil ... ruined the country ... leaving the plucky coalition to clear up the mess”.

Abuse of power is part of the human predicament and all of us should, as Victoria White says, ‘wake up to the potential for corruption in our political system’. So it is possible to argue that if electoral fortunes had favoured the other tribe during the Celtic Tiger period the roles could have been easily been reversed now.

It is necessary to disagree with Victoria White, however, when she says that “nearly all the commentariat”, ie, our media and academia, are “bigoted” and “biased” in favour of one of the tribes.

The reason that this country is bankrupt is not because of which of the tribes were in power. It was that one of them was in power too long.

As a result, this tribe’s most powerful members became hubristic and got carried away by the exuberance of their own, spin doctored, verbosity. They believed that all in the garden was rosy, and this was dutifully, and uncritically, relayed to the rest of us as gospel by what Victoria White calls “nearly all the commentariat”.

The media were not bigoted. They were just biased in favour of one particular tribe, the members of which seemed to be in near permanent government, at the time of the Celtic Tiger. Victoria White is right when she says that “changing the class of our ruling party doesn’t change anything”. It was the abuse of power which bankrupt the country. That is universal and is endemic in all classes.

It was the job of the commentariat to challenge that abuse of power but they fell down on the job.

A Leavy

Shielmartin Drive

Sutton

Dublin 13