Crooked politicians destroy faith in democracy

The issue about crooked politicians is not how few or how many they are. It is that they destroy faith in democracy, writes Gerard Howlin

Politicians are seldom crooked but they are mostly complicit. No, it is not by and large that they turn a blind eye to the corruption of others.

A learning from the tribunals and from Monday’s RTÉ Investigates programme is that those who shake down the system are instinctively furtive.

More insidiously the otherwise upright uphold a system designed to fail because they are the products of it and cannot survive outside it.

They cannot contemplate democratic revolution because they must be swept away by it.

The cannier of them know too that no system or party is more vulnerable than at the moment it attempts reform.

It is to the credit of the great majority of politicians that they personally never cross the line into corruption. They are simply passive supporters and beneficiaries of an electoral and wider political system which enables it.

It is not the immorality of a few, but a wider amorality that is the crux of the matter.

The truth is that supposedly in an age of reason, we live in a faith-based society. Systems are important to deliver better outcomes but systems only go so far.

In any event, they are utilitarian schemes set up for a moral purpose.

The ultimate test in any system is the faith-based one — of belief. Do we believe? Sadly, we don’t.

The issue about crooked politicians is not how few or how many they are. It is that they destroy faith in democracy.

They inculcate cynicism and when it comes to planning, they result in appalling decisions that blight communities and the environment for generations.

Climate change is certainly a factor in recurring cases of flooding. So too is wantonly bad planning. Behind some of that is stupidity. Behind more is corruption.

The result is not only a poorer quality of life, it is a sink hole for the exchequer. Hundreds of millions are required to apply end-of-pipe fixes to problems that should never have arisen in the first place.

Monday’s RTÉ Investigates shone a light on apparently blatant corruption in local politics.

We saw only excerpts of film, not the full unedited version any investigation, or criminal proceeding would base its outcome on. Therefore, I purposely use the word ‘apparently’.

But whatever the outcome of the processes that may begin as a consequence, it was shocking stuff. It showed nothing except a very dark side to public life.

I do, however, have one criticism of the programme. Passing mention only, was made of unnamed councillors who would have no truck with any shenanigans and whose declarations of interest were fully correct.

The reward for those councillors is a pittance and an unfairly large share of opprobrium. Because of a few — or we hope only a few — their job is harder.

If things are to change, a platform must be given to those who will actually deliver.

Monday night’s exposé was timely, coinciding at it does with the end of the life of this Dáil; a banking inquiry struggling to report; an imminent election; and an economy that is apparently set to surge again.

Systems matter all the time but they matter more and have longer consequences during economic growth.

During the crash the imperative was to slash spending and public investment halted. Now, correctly or otherwise, we have begun a phase of expansionary budgets.

If the emphasis on increased current spending is entirely unsustainable, should any number of external shocks hit the economy, capital spending is also being ratchetted up again.

Housing; schools; and — even if far too little to cater for an expanding economy — belated investment in public transport is pencilled in.

2016 is the year so to speak, when we will be playing with real money again. In a sense it is the moment when the future, as distinct from survival, is at stake.

As we saw on television on Monday night, we are reinvesting in a system that is not fit for purpose. It is sporadically corrupt.

That corruption haemorrhages public confidence. More generally, it is a system incapable of adequately policing itself and that takes major investment decisions and lots of very small ones too on the basis of the electoral cycle and very little other evidence.

This is the thin, almost imperceptible line between immorality and amorality, between corruption and collusion. Few are corrupt, but most opt to collude to one extent or another.

The electorate traditionally expects to have their palm greased with their own money. There is every sign that this is so again.

Lest there be any misunderstanding, it wasn’t just previous governments who set the pace, those in government now but in opposition then, invariably trumped the electoral offering with more but, fell short because they could not compete in credibility to actually deliver the largesse.

Only the failure to acquire office saved them from the censure of responsibility. Now they have office and responsibility but, nothing has changed.

The same system, the same attitudes remain intact, pandering to the same electorate with largely the same expectations.

We shall see how it turns out, the day after the next election, but hope for systemic change, is in short supply.

We continue as we are, which is in a state of being permanently appalled but unwilling to take any corrective action.

Perhaps in all of this we might spare a thought for the corrupt. Their capacity to shake down the system is based on the fact that in some manner of means, they mastered it.

Applauded, to an extent, until uncovered they become instant iconic bogeymen for all that is wrong with it.

One moment they are swaggering, consequential but the next, caught on camera, all their status curdles and becomes sour.

How exactly is that? What is the process of reverse magic that translates status into censure? Is it the shock of the discovery or the instant withering of utility that accompanies it?

There was certainly something profoundly shocking on RTÉ Investigates. The damage done to the standing of politics and public processes is enormous and corrosive.

But it didn’t come from nowhere. The banking inquiry detailed the consequences of unenforced regulation. In plain sight of official Ireland, dozens of councillors submitted declarations of interest that were clearly fictitious.

But management, concerned primarily with managing councillors, chose to take little heed and conducted business regardless.

An interesting fact highlighted by RTÉ Investigates is how inaccessible those declarations are to most people. It was all hiding in plain sight. Those in the know, knew.

But in local authorities, where political power aside from planning is notoriously weak, management is an almost unaccountable fiefdom.

A councillor demanding a bribe may be the most obvious symptom of corruption, but the corruption it bespeaks is systemic.

Some of it is specific and immoral but, much more of it is systemic amorality.