Time for a change

If it’s possible to argue that tribalism is the very antithesis of democracy then it should not be too difficult to argue that a mothballed democracy feeds tribalism and the divisions that guarantees.

An inactive, unreliable and uneven democracy is a seedbed for the very forces that would deny it.

Those issues came together yesterday when Britain’s Electoral Commission reported that one in four people in Northern Ireland are not registered to vote even though they go to the polls in a little over two weeks time in an election that is the most important possibly since the end of the Second World War.

Those who advocate an active democracy will have to argue the case strongly as the North’s population has been denied its wish to remain in the EU.

The Democratic Unionist Party has, despite the North’s remain vote, been a bulwark in Conservative efforts to deliver Brexit.

That reality, and the mothballing of Stormont — the third anniversary looms — devalues an individual’s vote in a way that must undermine the system. But then, the tables can be turned by voting for those who would make democracy work. Time for a change.

If it’s possible to argue that tribalism is the very antithesis of democracy then it should not be too difficult to argue that a mothballed democracy feeds tribalism and the divisions that guarantees.

An inactive, unreliable and uneven democracy is a seedbed for the very forces that would deny it.