EDITORIAL: The electorate, the Cathaoirleach's seat and the many ways to do democracy

At this week’s Nenagh Municipal District AGM, councillor Joe Hanigan raised an issue with the way the District Cathaoirleach is chosen. 

He said he thought that the top seat should be filled by a poll topper, and in the case of Nenagh, it was.

Cllr Hanigan’s issue was not with who took the seat but rather who decided who took the seat. 

You can read all about it on page 10 of this week’s Tipperary Star or from here.

Keen-eyed readers might remember a similar situation last week when Cllr Jim Ryan raised the same issue at the Thurles-Templemore AGM. 

The issue there appeared to be that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael teamed up and decided what would happen at the meeting, and as Cllr Ryan saw it, the independents didn’t get a look in.

It transpired of course that one independent was consulted, Michéal Lowry, who was elected as Leas-Cathaoirleach.

The reply given to Cllr Ryan was that that is democracy. And, indeed it is. 

But that isn’t much of an answer, because democracy is not just one thing.

It would be equally democratic to do as Cllr Hanigan suggested. Let the people decide is, after all, the heart of democracy.

It won’t be a surprise to anyone if we say that political parties team up when they share a goal. 

But what of independents? With their increase in popularity, we have started talking about them in collective terms. But they are, by definition, independent, not just of any party but of one another too.

Many people voted for independents because they didn’t want to vote for a party, but in many cases, an independent is a resource parties tap into.

Party policies are one thing, but values are another, and if an independent’s values are the same or similar to a political party, does it really matter that they are not a member? 

In the case of the Cathaorleach’s chair, the missing value seems to be transparency. It is pretty much decided who will be elected before the meeting, and surely, the discussion should be more open than that. 

Discussions behind closed doors are a part of democracy for sure. 

But perhaps that is the problem.