The voters have got us into a mess that the politicians now have to sort out

IT WAS 1962. The winter had been long, dark and harsh with snow piling up on the streets and footpaths, then partially thawing and then freezing again. It was a time when people found it very difficult and dangerous to go about their ordinary business. Even the sure-footed were slipping and falling. There were reports of fractured limbs, much bruising and pain.

One morning a friend was making his way back to work on his bike, then the most common form of transport for the ordinary person. He had navigated the slippery surface of Irishtown, made his way under the shelter of the West Gate, but then at the junction of Wolfe Tone Street and O’Connell Street he failed to steer clear of a large lump of frozen snow, the wheels of the bike skidded and he fell on the icy surface of the street.

It was a nasty fall, the brunt of which he felt in the sharp pains in his elbows and knees. As he was struggling to stand up and recover his dignity and his bike, he was approached by Martin Cronin who gave him some assistance. Martin was a well-known, highly respected Clonmel man, a resident of the nearby Wolfe Tone Street. He was also a long-time politician and a hard-working councillor in the Corporation. Amongst his many attributes, he was an authority on greyhounds and was renowned for his plain-speaking. He called a spade a spade.

“Are you alright?” the councillor  kindly asked my friend, who was in no mood for polite conversation.

He exploded: “Why doesn’t the bl...dy Corporation grit the streets,” he yelled.

 To which Martin equally explosively replied: “You’re like all the rest of them,” he said, “if you were a politician on the Corporation you’d s..t miracles!”

As I said, he was a plain speaker, and readers can fill in the dots.

Truth to tell, the Corporation had gritted the streets, but it was impossible to give any adequate protection against the severity of the weather.

As I sat comfortably by the fire last week and watched the gradual release of the recent elections, I recalled those comments which the late Councillor Cronin made all those decades ago. 

Do we expect miracles, the instant solutions to difficult problems, from our politicians? We are fortunate to live in a democracy, which of itself is a cumbersome, slow-moving form of government, subject to constant public scrutiny and constantly evolving rules and regulations. In Ireland we have a written Constitution to which all our legislation is subject. And legislation itself is subject to a long process of Bills and Acts and debates and amendments until it is finally passed by a majority vote in the Dáil - by the politicians whom we elect.

We are now subject, as members of the EU, to substantial additional legislation. Our Constitution, too, imposes the absolute right to private property, which in the case of social housing, may inhibit the acquisition of land. So, in many of the problems which Ireland is facing, and which may not be unrelated to a rapidly rising population, there are no quick fixes. There are no miracles.

 Somebody has said that democracy is the most tortuously slow method of governance imaginable, and that is until you think of the alternative. And the alternative is that which many of us witnessed in the undemocratic authoritarianism under which millions of our fellow Europeans suffered in the 20th century, where personal freedoms and human rights were suppressed. It was punitive, inefficient, an ultimate failure, from which millions of citizens climbed over the walls which enclosed them to escape into western democracies.

The essential ingredient of a democracy is the free election of ordinary citizens, who have chosen politics and political parties to represent us. They are the candidates who present themselves to us every four or five years, to accept or reject, to cheer or to jeer.

As the results came through last week, I wondered why any ordinary person would willingly embrace politics as an avocation or a passion.

Many of us, fireside sitters, may have derived the same sort of pleasure in the spectacle as we would have from watching a spectator sport. Yet, for the participants it was a conclusive verdict, an acceptance or a rejection, all played out in numbers and percentages, and all in public. The candidates had met, as Kipling said “with triumph and disaster and treated those two imposters just the same.”

And that begs the question: Are politicians born or made? Do they have a special gene which enables them to survive the slings and arrows which we (the fireside-sitters) fling at them? What enables them to withstand our name-calling, our cynicism, our accusations, our thankless dismissals, our lack of gratitude for what they may have done, while blaming them for what we perceive they did not do?

Leaving aside all that negative baggage, it has to be accepted that our politicians are the essential ingredient in the democracy in which we live. They are the nuts and bolts of our freedom, which allows us the freedom of speech to excoriate and say nasty things about them. And it seems to me that they do a job, which the vast majority of us would not do. So, here’s a thank you from this (fire-sitting) columnist, to all of you who presented yourselves as candidates in the last election. Whether you won or lost, you tried.

A long time ago the bossy Laurel said to the always cowering Hardy - “Now that’s another fine mess you’ve gotten us into.”

In the recent election, we the electorate, got you into a fine mess. Now sort it out!