A MONTH ago, at the outset of the election campaign, I wrote that the most democratic outcome would he a minority Government supported by deflector candidates, and this looks to be pretty much what we're going to get. The successful nature of the election can best he gauged by the amount of tuttutting in the ranks of the leading Dublin 4 commentators, who are beside themselves with concern that, despite their best advice, Ireland is on the slippery slope back to the dark ages.
Over the past week they have been queueing up to bemoan Ireland's descent hack into the culture of Civil War politics, or to tick the electorate off for its preference for clientelism over something called intelligent parliamentarianism.
There has also, of course, been a great deal of talk about something called "instability". Yet again, the Irish electorate has disappointed its tutors with its resistance to modern ideas.
The word "stability", though fine sounding of itself, does not mean what it might at first appear to mean. A "stable" political situation, when referred to on national radio or in the national newspapers, means a situation in which the whims of the people have been excluded from the equation.
The recalcitrance of the electorate has been the greatest problem facing the elite of this society in the years of modernisation. In particular, attempts to appropriate the electoral system to benefit the public at large has been a source of deep concern. However, in the past decade, after many years of frustration, the new ascendancy learned to crack the code and remove much of its dangerous capacity for democratic expression.
The last three governments have been formed with a view to "stability", which is to say they have been formed to enable the elite to rule without undue reference to the wishes of the public.
The people were told the options and asked for their verdict. When that verdict was deemed unsatisfactory, the issue was taken out of the hands of the electorate and, three times in a row, governments were formed which bore not the slightest resemblance to the will of the people.
In two of these, Fianna Fail, the party which had traditionally shown the greatest inclination to pander to the congenital sub modernity of the people, was persuaded into a three legged relationship with a smaller party, one "left", the other "right", but both answering lustily to the call of the "modern European model of politics".
THUS, the political system was appropriated by those who best appreciate what is in the national interest. This is not to say these administrations lacked support. On the contrary, allowing for occasional outbreaks of tribalism they had the support of the media, business sector, economists, "social partners" and virtually every other body in the business of moving and shaking in the land. Only the people were excluded, which is apparently what the modern model of politics requires.
Of course, only a total reprobate could have objected to this. After all, it could hardly be suggested that the people knew what was best, never mind what was in "the national interest". Left to themselves, they would have gone on electing a bunch of parish pump politicians, who would have insisted on delivering "largesse" to the people who have voted them into office.
Did you ever hear anything as primitive? How could such an approach to electing a government be reconciled with the aspirations of a modern, pluralist state? Had the electorate learned nothing in the decades of modernisation? Did they not know the culture of the stroke and the fix had been swept away by the waves of modernisation? Did they not know the new politics, as practised by the Progressive Democrats, the Labour Party and Democratic Left, was no longer about patronage or chauvinism, that loyalty to any of these parties would not entitle voters to political favours?
For a long time, people believed all this. Not only that, but for a long time most people actually thought this lark about modernised politics might even be a good idea. The people wanted to change. They wanted to be better. But then, gradually but steadily, people began to suspect things were not exactly as they were being described. From the behaviour of the various smaller parties in government, it became clear that what was objected to by the would be modernisers of Irish politics was not so much that the political system was prone to misuse by sectional interests, as that it was prone to misuse by the wrong sectional interests.
A great many people, who had been willing to forgo their long established culture of clientelism began to see that "intelligent parliamentarianism" was coming to mean not the modernised politics they had been promised, but simply a new set of custodians for the honeypots of power. This necessitated a certain change of heart.
It is all very well to vote for those parties which make opposition to clientelism an ethical virtue, but it is another to miss out on whatever is going on on account of too enthusiastic a belief in the virtues of modernisation.
FOR a long time I have observed the people studying this process with a high degree of attention. In this election, they have resembled nothing so much as a steely old darts player, seeking a very precise combination in order to finish a vital game. The deep intelligence of the electorate has been seeking a combination of parties and independents which would rule out all foreseeable misuses of its decisions, and ensure that, if there are going to be honey pots, we might as well all get our fingers sticky.
By leaving open only the possibility of a minority government supported by independents, the voters have said: "Get out of this one!" Only one possibility remains for "stable" government: a Fianna Fail/Labour coalition. However, by contriving to force the Labour Party to rule this out explicitly in advance of the election, this option was made more remote than would otherwise have been the case.
As I wrote a month ago, the television deflector issue, for all its ostensible triviality, embraces issues of exclusion, discrimination, exploitation, market convergence, pseudomodernisation, inequity, the favouring of monied interests and many other aspects of the democratic deficit. My joy ate the news of the victory of Mr Thomas Gildea on the anti MMDS ticket, therefore, is not simply the usual pundit's self satisfaction on being proved correct.
There was, of course, technically speaking, only one candidate elected on the deflector issue per se. But on the basis of what we have heard in the past week from Mr Jackie Healy Rae, it is clear that he, for one, has in mind the deflection of economic resources from Dublin to Kerry South.
