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As
a habit I do not vote. Persuaded by some anarchists
who say ‘why bother, sure the government always
get in,’ I see little point. But as someone who
values using my vote purposefully on any election
day by usually refusing to cast it for anyone in our
hopeless political class I find the British Government
decision to suspend elections a usurpation of political
rights. Besides being a major infringement on democratic
freedoms, it denies those of us so inclined our one opportunity
to tell those eager to disempower rather than represent
us - ‘better our ballot paper down the toilet
bowl than in your grubby paws.’ While our aspiring
ministers of hyperbole seek to draw comparisons between
the suspension of elections here and what occurred
under Pinochet in Chile, a more apt comparison with
the Chilean experience should be situated in more
recent phenomena. Three years ago, Katie Donovan said
of the South American state, ‘it's still a tutored
democracy.’ Around the same time the Chilean
President elect, Ricardo Lagos, termed it a 'castrated
democracy'. An equally valid discursive comparison
may be drawn with Singapore which was described by
Conor O’Clery as a ‘managed democracy’.
Nevertheless,
and not withstanding whatever our propagandists and
spin doctors tell us, Britain is not a totalitarian
state and does not impose an authoritarian regime
in the North of Ireland. A strong degree of pluralism
remains and elections have not been abolished; we
can still elect local councillors and send MPs to
Westminster. The people who implement direct British
rule in the current hiatus, while British state appointees,
have themselves electoral mandates, being elected
to an institution which a majority of people in the
North of Ireland both accept as being legitimate,
and actively legitimise by casting their votes in
elections the purpose of which is to send people to
the British parliament.
None
of this, however, invalidates, the very real (if not
albeit firmly held) concerns raised by Sinn Fein and
others that the suspension of elections is clear evidence
of anti-democratic trends emerging within the British
state’s management of the North. Coupled with
the postponement of the elections are the arrests
or questioning of a number of prominent journalists
whose sole crime is to make public the business of
the public. What threat is posed to state security
by the public finding out that both Jonathan Powell
and Martin McGuinness think some unionist politicians
are donkeys? Had the public not already arrived at
that conclusion long before the transcripts of - again
anti-democratic - bugged telephone calls were revealed?
Added
to this has been the shroud of secrecy which enveloped
the Stevens Report and the determination of the British
Government to thwart a full scale international inquiry
into its findings. Northern Irish society is becoming
less open and more rigid - to varying degrees it is
tutored, managed and castrated. And there is no ethical
justification for any of these, even the last, despite
many elected politicians here being fluent in bollix.
In
terms of policy substance the postponement of assembly
elections will hardly impact. Most people watching
the political class squabble and shout, duck and dive,
spin and spoof, on Insight a few nights ago
may conclude that a lie detector would have been as
welcome at their table as SARS. The presence of ministers
with plumy British accents rather than our own home
grown stand-ins for the British with their more familiar
but less than BBC English inflections is unlikely
to make any difference to people over here. The British
can take direct responsibility for closing down our
hospitals rather than have Irish surrogates do it
for them.
But
this is not the point. The very purpose of elections
is to provide an opportunity to elect people that
the government of the day may not be favourably disposed
to. Are old firm matches at Park Head or Ibrox the
next to be rigged so that the end result is always
a draw just in case a victory for either side would
inflame sectarian passions over here?
Sinn
Fein have complained that the events have taken us
back to the days of the civil rights protests. The
danger in this line of critique is that it may put
ideas into the heads of British ministers which would
lead to a resurrection of the old policy of ‘some
men six votes’ - all those who favour the Good
Friday Agreement would have six times as many votes
as those opposed. Would it be any more absurd than
suspending elections to achieve the same result?
That
the British state would seek to openly and unashamedly
subvert the democratic process in order to safeguard
its long pursued alternative to republicanism is a
measure of just how determined it is to salvage its
knackers yard wherein the only thing receiving the
coup d’grace is republicanism. Writing in 1999
the British Prime Minister Tony Blair made his intention
clear:
A
devolved assembly and government for Northern Ireland
is now there for the taking … Taken together
with the Good Friday agreement, this offers unionists
every key demand they have made since partition
80 years ago. The principle of consent, no change
to the constitutional status of Northern Ireland
without the consent of the majority of people, is
enshrined. The Irish constitution has been changed
… When I first came to Northern Ireland as
Prime Minister, these demands were pressed on me
as what unionists really needed. I have delivered
them all.
Intent
on ensuring this major act of completion we are to
be tutored on how to behave and subsequently produce
the proper result - only that which dovetails with
Britain’s strategic intentions whereby in the
words of a British security source ‘the endgame
is one of a normal environment in Northern Ireland.
What we end up with is a normal British garrison.’
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