A successful and fair minority government is the way forward

The media and many political commentators, displaying serious collective amnesia, are, lemming like, demanding a ‘stable’ grand coalition between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.

They seem to have taken an extremely forgiving attitude and have forgotten that both these parties wreaked enduring financial and social havoc on the Irish people in recent times. Fianna Fáil were responsible for the unprecedented devastation and destruction of the economy, which forced the country into a hugely-embarrassing bail-out and loss of sovereignty, resulting in the permanent loss of control of our affairs to strangely named foreigners.

Meanwhile, Fine Gael, cushioned with their own world class salaries and pensions, made the ‘hard’ decisions and displayed a total lack of empathy when foisting unequal, unjust and unnecessarily brutal austerity on the most vulnerable. As is their wont, they pandered to their European masters, their support base, big business and the well off, and despite being festooned with hugely paid advisors and handlers, ensured their inevitable demise in displaying the same incompetence, secrecy and cronyism, layered with their traditional arrogance and innate political naivety.

Both parties, during the election campaign, conveniently managed to airbrush from discussion and debate their greatest political and social crime: the abject capitulation to the bully boys and girls in Europe, and their slavish and crass acceptance on our behalf of private bank debts of €64 billion to be paid by future generations in perpetuity, as well as their pathetic rush to pay the bond holders in full. Together they ensured that all of this private gambling debt was shouldered by a totally innocent Irish people to protect the failed euro, the EU itself, bankers and the German and French banking system.

Those clamouring for a ‘stable’ government of the terrible twins should be careful of what they wish for. The result would be more of the same, a coalition of undoubted and doubly proven incompetence, arrogance and cronyism, which if they quickly didn’t tear each other asunder through infighting and petty jealousy, would have the numbers to drive a right wing agenda to the ultimate detriment of the ordinary citizen.

Surely given our recent history, we don’t need more of the kind of destructive monolithic stability we have all experienced to our cost. There is much precedence for successful and fair long lasting minority governments, ruling openly by general consensus in the national interest instead of diktat, with a strong opposition to keep manners on the dominant party.

John Leahy

Wilton Road

Cork