Citizens crave new political thinking for a brighter future

One thing I always make a point of doing around Christmas time is to pour a glass of wine (keeping the bottle nearby), sit down at the open fire, forbid, under threat of death, all and any interruptions, and phone my friend, Vivien, in Alberta for a long, rambling chat. Satisfied that no husband has been disposed of in the preceding year, either legally or illegally, we move onto the subject of our children: all well, thank God; shocked at how quickly they are moving on, we reminisce their childhoods with a mixture of sadness and gratitude. We lament their innocence when they believed we were drinking raspberry tea out of cups filled with red wine while gardening. Eventually, we get round to talking about our respective country's economy. Viv is well aware of the problems we are facing here in Ireland, as apparently we have done a very good job of mortifying ourselves in front of the whole world. She says it sounds like Ireland needs a whole new government with a totally new agenda – a sparkling, clean slate as it were. On one hand, it may seem that we are going to get that very chance sometime in March – the time most likely to be set by the government for a general election. While we have seen from the Obama experience that one person, or one party, is rarely a panacea for all a country's woes, it would be reassuring to have the option to vote for a party with a new way of thinking. But encouraging outside-the-box thinking is not something that makes us Irish very comfortable. Rather than teaching our children to think critically and question everything, we insist that they conform, question nothing and, for the love of God, don't rock the boat. It really is no wonder that so many people in positions of power in religious orders managed to rape and torture Irish children for so long and with such a level of impunity. Nor is it any wonder that Fianna Fail, along with the banking sector, has made this country the economic equivalent of Dante's Inferno – as a society, we gave them a carte blanche. In 1992, Fianna Fail brokered a deal with Shell Oil to develop and extract natural gas from the Corrib gas fields off the coast of Mayo. In return for our natural resource, Shell would pay us 25 per cent tax against which the cost of exploration would be written off. The world average for such a tax is 40 per cent. Furthermore, what royalties do we receive for our own property? Nothing, zero, zilch. The argument that the government used was that we need to keep the oil and gas companies sweet to entice more exploration. And how did we register our displeasure with this deal? Two years later, we voted the same government back into power. Interestingly, the Albertan government recently came under similar pressure from the oil and gas companies to keep royalty payments as low as possible. So both sides had a pow-wow in Calgary, took a good puff of the peace pipe and settled on oil royalties being reduced from 50 per cent to 40 per cent and gas royalties being dropped from 50 per cent to 36 per cent - the company directors were delighted and vowed that exploration would not only continue but increase. But our dilemma in Ireland is to whom do we turn to get us back on our feet? Are all our political parties not really one and the same? Or do the words 'Minister Mary Coughlan should keep her mouth closed…' symbolise a possible break from the traditional, closed-shop, self-destructive way of running our state? Watching Deputy Pearce Doherty speaking these words on budget day was like watching a football game between defending champions and the underdogs. The champions were ahead by a couple of goals, when the underdogs decide to give one of their subs a run. Onto the pitch runs this newcomer and suddenly he starts to pop the ball over the bar. By now, many of the champions' supporters have left the grounds, believing that they have the cup in the bag. But the points add up, and everyone rushes back to their seats to see what happens next. No-one has any idea how this election will turn out, but Sinn Fein is certainly attracting a lot of attention and getting people thinking in a new direction. While there is a core of ardent supporters of Sinn Fein, there is also a cohort who would never dream of voting for them. Then, there are those who are beginning to think that perhaps it is time to compartmentalise any negative connotations this party evokes and consider them serious contenders. A couple of weeks ago Wikileaks claimed that Gerry Adams had prior knowledge of the Northern Bank raid. Adams stated this was not a new claim, and he denied the accusation. We would be fools to believe that any politically party is squeaky clean, but given the experience of the last couple of years, some Irish people might well be tempted to ask how much of a difference is there between robbery of a bank and robbery by a bank?