We have to rise above our undemocratic beginnings

For how much longer can Fine Gael, and Fianna Fáil keep on defying the basic laws of political science? The centre-right won this election.

Fine Gael, and Fianna Fáil should merge into one party of the centre-right. It matters little what name they append to themselves. They are both green Tories and should acknowledge this.

Each of these parties still depend on traditional Civil War voting patterns which are anachronistic today. It is a ploy that serves to perpetuate a centre-right wing hegemony.

Last week’s 65% turnout is an indictment of our dysfunctional polity, and further to this is our brazen disenfranchisement of Irish people living abroad, a policy wholly out of step with 65 other countries that allow external voting.

The electoral culture must radically change. There are choices in Irish politics which were not there before. The ruling elite of FG and FF have long benefited from voter apathy and non-participation but will this continue?

Catherine Murphy Social Democrat TD for Kildare North recently referred to an Einstein quote “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results”.

We are hardly a stupid people, so why do we put up with the cant, hypocrisy, smug arrogance and humbug of our political elites?

It’s time to end this crooked game of political poker. We own it to ourselves and our children.

And it is also time stand to up to the self- appointed jackasses who have turned the terrorist crime of 1916 into a noble patriotic act. It is salutary to remember that the beginning of our slide into servile abasement began inside a GPO in 1916. We have an obligation, if we are truly democratic, to condemn that savage event which ultimately led to the political circus we now live in.

“ The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings,’’ as Cassius said in Julius Caesar.

Pierce Martin

Willowbrook Grove,

Celbridge

Co Kildare