Events have a lot in common with banana republics

WHICH Irish politician would you like to see taken to Guantanamo Bay and water-boarded until they told the truth?

Now, that may seem an unusual, and highly morally suspect, question, but it was one I was asked live on national radio this week, and it did set me thinking about our public representatives and their often curious relationship with honesty.

Two weeks in and we still have no idea why Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan retired/was sacked (delete as applicable according to gullibility).

Was it because of the bugging crisis; or was it because of the whistle-blower crisis; or was it because of the crisis before the last crisis which has now merged into all the other crises?

Or was it because Enda Kenny needed a body to throw from the train to desperately try to keep the whole, shuddering thing on the tracks?

Maybe Pat Rabbitte can help us — after all he is the minister responsible for communications — especially with the latest claims to emerge that the Garda sought to destroy the proof of the illegally taped calls before they came to light.

“I do know about that, that’s the good news. And the bad news is, I’m not going to tell you,” Mr Rabbitte told Newstalk Breakfast as his self-satisfied smugness exploded through the radio.

We do not know the justice minister’s take on this as he now runs away from journalists on sight, something he has repeatedly done since returning from his St Patrick’s Day jaunt to Central America.

But the firing of the chief of police is a big deal — especially when no explanation is given.

Indeed, it is the sort of thing we expect to happen in countries like the ones in Central America, which generally, we still look down upon in that superior Western-centric way as somehow less than us.

Imagine if the police chief in this imagined Central American banana republic had been sacked by the prime minister, but he kept denying he fired him, even though he sent an emissary to the top cop’s house the night before to tell him of his displeasure?

The PM gets branded a liar in the national parliament, but the opposition is so impotent, and the political bag carriers of the ruling power block so spineless, no headway can be made there.

The PM lets slip that the attorney general is too scared to talk to him on the telephone about rampant phone bugging that has been going on in the state for decades.

Whistleblower cops emerge to expose widespread abuse of a police system which has cost the State a great deal of money, but instead of being treated like heroes, the police chief brands their actions “disgusting” and the justice minister denigrates the men in parliament and misleads it about their actions, and only gives a half-hearted apology for this when it is dragged out of him five months later.

In the background, the body charged with policing the police in this shady state, let’s call them GSOC, believe someone has been bugging their HQ, possibly to gain information on an investigation the police have repeatedly stalled into whether they allowed a major drug dealer’s trial to collapse because he was an informer.

On top of this, the whistleblower branded “disgusting” hands over a dossier claiming crimes, including murder, have not been properly investigated by the police, and despite the gravity of the allegations, this is only taken seriously by the prime minister when, in a rare blow for accountability, the leader of the opposition shames him with the dossier in parliament.

Nearly two decades on, the unsolved murder of a French film-maker continues to haunt the national consciousness as it becomes interwoven with the latest bugging scandal and civil actions claiming an attempt at a botched-police fit-up.

One of the country’s senior officials — apparently — fails to pass on a key letter from the sacked police chief to the justice minister warning him of the unfolding bugging scandal, two weeks before the police chief is, seemingly, scapegoated for the scandal.

Opposition groups openly accuse the PM of not telling the truth to parliament regarding this.

Then allegations emerge the police wanted to destroy the illegally-obtained tapping material before it got out.

Rank-and-file police officers who just want to get on with their jobs protecting the public are left deeply demoralised by the stream of scandals and lack of backbone undermining the force.

All the while, the country has grown immune to almost weekly reports of the latest outrage in raging gangland warfare which now only warrants comment when it spills over to the gates of a children’s creche, as it did two weeks ago.

A thousand people a week flee the country — which the IMF estimates has a real unemployment rate above 20% — in search of a better life free of it and its ever-present air of official hypocrisy and incompetence.

Now, if all that had been going on in one of those “lesser” countries in Central America, we would no doubt think: “Goodness! I’m very glad I don’t live in a state as dysfunctional and badly damaged as that.”

But, of course, unfortunately, you do.

And instead of addressing this truth, everyone in the Dáil seems more concerned with calling everyone else a liar.

Take this snippet from Michael Noonan as the Government machine rolled over any hint that Alan Shatter may have done anything wrong: “A Sinn Féin deputy stated on television that she did not believe a word coming out of the minister’s mouth. When challenged on that, she claimed that she did not believe anything that the Government stated on this issue. Contrast that with her total belief in the statement from her leader that he was never a member of the IRA and that he had nothing to do with the Jean McConville disappearance or the other people who disappeared when the Boston tapes have fully recorded his place in that.”

With grimly ironic timing, as all this played out, a business merger effectively made the Irish Republic the banana capital of the world.

It seems we won’t find any answers, or indeed the truth, in the Dáil. The all dominant Executive controls everything.

That’s where power lies in this country — or is it more honest to say power just lies in this country?