There's a sharp contrast between the alarming lack of interest in the Nice referendum, as the former chief justice Thomas Finlay finds it, and the salty excitement of Labour's leadership contest, for which entries have now closed, writes Dick Walsh.
Everyone seems to have a view as to who should lead the Labour Party and why - but, in line with the party's constitution, the public's role in the contest is limited to attendance at open sessions or hustings, the first of which is being held today in Fethard on Sea. The public may attend; only members are entitled to vote.
In the Nice referendum, arranged for October 19th, the public is the object of the exercise. The bigger the turnout for Nice the better for democracy. Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Labour, the Progressive Democrats, industrial organisations and trade unions are in favour of the Treaty of Nice.
The opposition is composed not so much of heavyweight critics in organisations set up to defeat the treaty but of a constellation of small but determined groups allied to the National Platform which want to see the referendum defeated for a variety of reasons.
Sinn Féin, socialist, Independents, and workers' parties share opposition to the European Union with nationalists and religious fundamentalists. They make common cause with people resolved to vote No for reasons which have more to do with local or national politics than with any international cause. Others who profess attachment to no political or religious group may not vote No but will certainly refuse to vote Yes. They will be found in pre-referendum polls either under the heading Don't Know or Won't Vote. Even Tom Finlay had admitted that he was perturbed by a poll conducted on behalf of the Referendum Commission, of which he is chairman, and which showed that only 16 per cent of those questioned claimed to have understood fully the issues in the treaty.
The former Fine Gael leader, John Bruton, now leading the party's campaign for a Yes vote, claimed that the Cabinet, which had met for two days in Killarney, had now gone into hiding in Donegal. The Ministers, he said, were hiding from the farmers and from Agricultural Commissioner Franz Fischler.
Nonsense, said Dick Roche, who now has special responsibility for European affairs, referring Bruton to Bertie Ahern's promise of the biggest referendum campaign since 1972.
Some reports were already suggesting a campaign that could be compared with a general election.
But not, we must hope, with the latest festival of lies, evasion and exaggeration to which politicians and public were treated by Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats.
The campaign which their strategists devised to hang on to power provoked suspicion and resentment in the Opposition and the electorate, seriously damaged politics and made it essential that standards should be restored and codes of behaviour repaired without delay.
We have seen how the lies, evasions and exaggeration make it difficult, if not impossible, to trust information supplied by those who have put the retention of power before the exercise of responsibility for the State's finances and public services. We will learn the hard way what it takes to restore trust in politics and politicians. But we know how important it is that the job should be done.
Whereas the Labour debate opened with a series of civilised exchanges with Pat Kenny on RTÉ Radio One, no sooner had the referendum date been announced than there was a rush on either side of the European issue for the Hammer House of Horror version of politics.
Labour is fortunate to have at its disposal such candidates as Pat Rabbitte, Brendan Howlin, Eamon Gilmore and Róisín Shortall - all experienced, articulate and unselfish, and all ready and willing to serve the party and the State.
Their colleagues Liz McManus, Joe Costello, Willie Penrose and Joan Burton, who have been nominated for the position of deputy leader, have won the confidence of fellow politicians and earned the support of a wider public.
Given the state of public life in the Republic, it's important to be able to point to a group of people in whose political careers the ideal of public service has come first. This is not to suggest that idealists are not at work in other parties or among the growing number of Independents. But in an area in which public service is too seldom recognised and public servants of all persuasions are too often ignored, a note of encouragement might not go amiss.
As to the rules of either contest - Labour leadership or Nice referendum - Tom Paine, who inspired the revolutions in America and France, came up, in The Rights of Man, with what A. J. P. Taylor called the best statement of democratic belief, in any language.
Paine wrote: "A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody."
And when he was tried in England for such seditious stuff, his defender, Thomas Erskine, delivered what Michael Foot was to call a classic defence of a free press: "Let reason be opposed to reason and argument to argument, and every good government will be safe."