Today’s post is published on behalf of Gregory Coen, Secretary of the NI21 Lagan Valley Constituency Association. Having read the posts on this blog he asked if I would be willing to host an article for him and I was more than happy to agree. If you have any comments on this post he can be contacted on Facebook or on Twitter @gregorycoen. Hope you enjoy.
In Defence of Democracy
Democracy (dictionary definition) – government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system.
I’m going to start with the current political setup of Northern Ireland and with a statement that may come as a shock to no-one but the politicians themselves.
It ain’t working!
Forgive me if that was a blunt statement but I figured someone ought to tell you straight up. While we’re talking I would like to draw your attention to the definition of democracy at the top of this post, specifically the part about “power (is) vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents,” cos frankly you’re doing a pretty piss poor job of the whole idea.
I’m not going to say that democracy is perfect, because no system can ever truly be so, but it’s about the best you can do for establishing a civilised culture for people in general and the idea is pretty simple. People vote for you, you go to a nice building on top of a hill, you talk with other representatives about how to provide a better future for ALL of the people, agree a plan that is acceptable to all and then crack on with doing it. It’s not exactly rocket science is it?
It is therefore incredibly frustrating to everyone that what we actually have is an Executive caught in a repeating loop. Continually folding back over itself, playing the same tune over and over and over again! Policy in the Assembly has stagnated and ground to a halt. The two biggest parties, each an extreme of the other, when not tearing into each other, are working behind the scenes to undermine each other. It just isn’t healthy and to quote one political figure “this place is dysfunctional.”
We shouldn’t be surprised really, for what we have done as an electorate is let this farce continue. Albert Einstein once defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” This is what we, the electorate, have done. We’ve gone insane! The people who support the extremes will continue to do so, maintaining the status quo (in Northern Ireland we like to call this the ‘us vs. them’ system of government), while the moderates become apathetic and stop voting altogether.
I, for one, am tired of it. I’m tired of the same old story of flags, parades, victims, flags, parades, victims, because there is frankly more to life than this. I’m tired year after year, fighting for the lesser of who cares! I’m tired of setting the bar so low I can’t even see it any more. I’m not denying the above as issues, but government, I’m pretty sure (going out on a limb here), should at least some of the time do some, you know, governing.
Some of you may know that I’m about to become a father. As an expectant parent I lie awake at night thinking about their future. What sort of country will they grow up in? What will their education be like? Their health system? Their economy and job prospects? When that pee hit the stick, a whole raft of things you never have had to consider before suddenly rise up and smack you in the face!
Joking aside, these are questions I doubt our current politicians are equipped to handle. How can they when at one time some of them were trying to kill the people sitting opposite them? How can they when, blinded by religious evangelicalism, they call fellow citizens an abomination, and preach about abortion as a sin, even when the life of both mother and child is in danger? How can they when all they do is posture, protest and obfuscate? I’ll tell you how. They do it because they can. They do it because we let them.
What we need is people who inspire us. People with the common sense to consider the bigger picture regardless of their own beliefs. Consider the country as a whole, not their narrow view of it. I want the person representing me to listen to all viewpoints and from that suggest a policy. To be open-minded. Have a bit of self respect for themselves and others. To admit when they are wrong. To raise the level of public debate in this country on honest-to-God issues. To be intelligent enough to speak in complete sentences! Why is that so hard?!
I wrote a post on Facebook a few days ago that proved very popular by stating two things. I stated that this is OUR country. I stated that I would very much like to have it back. This is why I joined NI21. To get my country back, not for me, not even for my children, but for all. I don’t care if you are Unionist or Nationalist. I don’t care if your are Protestant or Catholic, religious, atheist, black, white, gay or straight. What I care about is moving forward as a country, striving for a future, aspiring to better.
You can call me naive, an idealist, a dreamer but, as John Lennon would say, I’m not the only one. The current standing of Northern Ireland as part of the UK is, like it or not, a necessary consequence of our history but at the same time it should not stop us, its people, from trying to help it progress to a better future. For those apathetic people I talked about earlier, now is the time. Don’t deny yourself a place in the conversation. To refuse to vote is to give up that right, to diminish democracy and hand it to the extremists. NI21 is a party, from my own experience on the inside and for once in my lifetime, something that is truly for the people of Northern Ireland, by the people of Northern Ireland. Surely that is something that deserves a chance?
Practical Idealism 