ON THE CANVASS:More than 200 Independent candidates are trying to get their messages across, writes PAUL CULLEN
ANNO DOMINI 2011 and a new breed of Independent candidate is knocking on doors looking for votes. The politicians have changed and so have the voters, but the concerns of the latter remain the same.
The candidate is a slim, neatly dressed African man, oblivious to the rain teeming down on this half-empty estate in Portlaoise. The young woman at the door is experiencing problems getting a lone-parent payment. She explains the nature of the eternal political bargain, as she sees it: “If I help you, you’ll help me, OK?”
All politics is local, said Tip O’Neill, but no one said the politicians had to be local too. Rotimi Adebari, the country’s first black mayor and a first-time general election candidate, is a long way from Nigeria, where he grew up, but he’s attuned to Irish electoral ways.
“All my issues are national issues in nature but there are always local considerations,” he says as we tour sink estates with boarded-up houses and barred windows.
Once this would have been fodder for Fianna Fáil teams, but today the only other political presence is that of the local Sinn Féin candidate.
Across the country in Dublin 4 the challenge lies in finding voters on a Sunday lunchtime, or at least finding people registered to vote in Dublin South East. “You’re very young,” says Anne Gallagher straight out to an admittedly fresh-faced Dylan Haskins.
Haskins takes the comment as the first, inevitable hurdle he has to jump. “Sure, I’m only 12,” says the 23-year-old political debutant. He quickly runs through his back-story: how he set up a “creative space” for arts-minded people in Temple Bar and is now the youngest-ever director of the Project Arts Centre.
Haskins, whose posters, video and website made an immediate impact in Dublin once the election was called, has heard all the jokes about being a lookalike for the Jedward twins or, to an older generation, Rick Astley. “Just because the campaign’s media-friendly they assume I’m shallow,” says the student and social entrepreneur. As for claims he has no policies, “there’s a 7,000-word policy document on the website. I just wish they would read the bloody thing.”
Some 202 Independent candidates are standing in this election, up from the 90 who stood in 2007. Public support for Independents is also up, but with the increase in numbers this is likely to splinter and the struggle for a lone voice to be heard is even greater.
The questions facing Independents are the same as ever. Is their focus on local issues or national issues? Who would they support after the election? Would they join up with other like-minded political loners? Adebari says he’s more a “Shane Ross than a Jackie Healy-Rae” style of Independent but he isn’t slow to major on local issues on the doorstep – the status of the local hospital, his plan for an exhibition centre in Portlaoise and objections to a through-way in a local estate.
Adebari sought asylum in Ireland in 2000, claiming religious persecution in Nigeria. He says he came straight to Ireland and did not, as has been alleged, work in London beforehand. His application was rejected but he got to stay after his child was born here and has been active in politics for eight years. Self-employed as a consultant in intercultural training, he identifies the jobs issue as his major concern.
The electorate has changed greatly; successive doors are opened by a South African man who promises Adebari his number one; the imam of the local mosque, from Pakistan, who says he has five votes in the house; and a returned emigrant from the UK who has sent out 200 CVs without getting a reply. To each of them, his message is: “Your issues are my issues.”
Back in Dublin, Haskins is talking about problem-solving and “making things work”, so Gallagher asks him how he’d make the HSE work. Already, he sounds like a practised politician, covering all the angles. He’s all for less red tape but is quick to rule out enforced job cuts.
Gallagher listens but admits she’s not predisposed to Independents. “You get too many people pulling in different directions. If Fine Gael get in and they’re relying on Independents, the government will fall and we’ll have Fianna Fáil back again,” she says.
Haskins grew up in Glasthule and says he wrote his first letter to a politician when he was 15. When that request for the setting up of youth centres went unanswered, he decided to take matters into his own hands. He organised gigs in empty halls, started bands and went on tour; a cultural entrepreneur was born.
There aren’t many answering his knock on South Dock Street but when the doors are opened, the gap between youthful optimism and the despair of the old is quickly evident. “You haven’t got a chance,” Billy Newman tells him. “They won’t listen to you. Nothing ever changes.” Haskins tries to convince the pensioner that change can come and that he is the man to drive it, but he’s unable to dislodge the doorside gloom. “You’re a voice in the wilderness. I admire you for trying,” is the best it gets.
For Haskins the problem is he is only one of eight Independents on the ballot paper in Dublin South East. He says he is standing on national issues, not local ones. But what would he do as an isolated backbench Independent TD if the Government has a large majority? “If I’m not being listened to in the Dáil, I’ll bring my message outside it,” he says.
In Portlaoise, Adebari dreams of holding the balance of power and says he’d be happy to play the role of “power broker” with Fine Gael. First he has to get elected.