Editorial - Proportional Representation, The Women's movement and media Cop outs

Re-alignment of Forces

There has been an absurdity about much of the recent political shenanagins. One hundred and forty four deputies (81 Fianna Fail and 63 Fine Gael), have been elected to the Dail on broadly the same political programme. Yet the negotiations on the formation of a new Government have reflected not at all this basic political fact of life - the two main parties have conducted negotiations only with those groups and individuals whose politics are clearly at variance with their own. Inevitably, this has exaggerated greatly the political power significance of those individuals and smaller parties and, in doing so, has not fairly reflected the clear wishes of the electorate.

This is just another of the indications of the immaturity of the Irish political system and a confirmation that the politicians of the main parties are in terested primarily in their own personal political advancement and hardly at all in the implementation of the policies they espouse. Were they interested in the latter they would not have allowed the moribund divergence of their political traditions to have preevented them from coming to an arrangement on Government which would have genuinely reflected the political preferennces of the people.

************
Hands off PR

Suggestions have been made since the election that the electoral system should again "be looked at" in view of the second inconclusive result of the general election. It is argued that with the reduction in the number of 3-seat connstituencies the Walsh Commission has virtually guaranteed "hung Dails" unless one of the political groupings gets 50% or more of the first preference votes.

The argument is essentially undemocratic for the assumpption behind is that the choice of the electorate should not be genuinely reflected in the Dail - that the electoral system should somehow deliberately distort the correlation between first preference votes and Dail seats.

There is nothing wrong with "hung Dails", the only prooblem is that the main political parties are so obsessed with partisan political advantage above and beyond the national interest (see above comment) that unlikey combinations of individuals and/or parties have to be cobbled together to form a Government. Were deputies to align themselves along genuine policy and ideological lines there would be no prooblem - the electoral system should not be changed to acccommodate the cynicism of politicians. It is the politicians that should be changed.

Another argument advanced is that the multi-seat arrangeement puts deputies from the same parties against each other and heightens the scramble in terms of constituency service to the detriment of deputies' legalitative functions. This is

certainly a feature of the present system and this does conntribute to the irrelevance and impotence of the Dail. But again there is a simple straightforward remedy: introduce legislation whereby any job, grant or benefit canvassed for on behalf of any person immediately disqualifies that person for the job, grant or benefit at least for a stated period of time. This system has worked well in Aer Lingus and there is no reason why it should not work throughout the public service.

It will be argued that such a change would cause considerrable hardship for it would mean that pressure from TDs could not be brought to bear in the alleviation of genuine hardship. This is implausible. If the system itself allows such a hardship then the system should be changed - it is not a matter of ameliorative measures by individual TDs on behalf of those few people in hardship whom they manage to get around to.

As has been argued here before, constituency service on the part of TDs is in the interests of the TDs, not in the innterests of constituents. Schemes should be devised to do away with this abbe ration of our Parliamentary system and these schemes should not include the perversion of the demoocratic electoral process.

*********************
The Women's Movement

Whatever happened it? The Movement played dead during the course of the general election »nd would have a nerve to blame anyone for the failure to raise women's rights issues in the course of the campaign.

In the 1981 election there was a determined attempt made to push women's issues and to mobilise women's votes as well as to promote women candidates. This time no attempt of any sort was made, all of which raises questions about the seriousness of those champions of women's rights.

There is likely to be an election again in the near future. If the women's movement wishes to play any part at all in the electoral process then it has got to start organising itself and and support right away. As a start off, there should be a meeting of women's leaders to discuss their failure in the 1982 election and plans for the next contest. Then a national conference of women should be held to co-ordinate activity throughout the country and to decide how to influence the next election and what issues to press. This should be followwed through by regional conferences and, where possible, connstituency meetings where TDs and candidates would be invit ed to state their views on the issues decided by the confeerence. The pressure should be kept up right through until the next election, otherwise the women of Ireland will have been betrayed again by those, many of whom have made public careers for themselves supposedly as champions of the cause of women's liberation.

Whatever organisational and administrative support that Magill can give within its meagre resources will be available for this purpose.

************************
Another Media Cop Out

More attention has been devoted to the media's coverrage of the recent election than in the case of any previous election. There seems to be an emerging consensus that the media's role was more prominent than hitherto (see Debate on page 26) but there is considerable controoversy that this more prominent role was proper.

Magill would argue that the media's role was not promiinent enough and that a great number of significant issues in the campaign were ignored or not teased out adequately. It is the job of journalists to give the electorate the informaation it requires to make a meaningful decision in an elecction. This means that it is not sufficient for the media simmply to report the sayings and doings of politicians but to explore the major issues and state the position of the parrties and candidates on these issues. It involves an examinaation of the record of Government, the analysis of policy statements, the exposure of inconsistencies and contradicctions where they arise etc. The media did this hardly at all in this past campaign.

There was no analysis of the performances of the Coalition and last Fianna Fail Governments. Critically, there was no comprehensive account of what the Haughey Governnment did in the first six months of 1981 to get itself reeelected. Neither was there an exposure of the inconsistenncies and contradictions in the Fine Gael manifesto for the June 1981 election which led directly to so many broken promises.

There was no exposure of the basic contradiction at the heart of Fianna Fail's new economic strategy which innvolved an acceptance of the budget deficit target set by the Coalition - that acceptance placed side by side with Fianna Fail's opposition to any corrective action in the latter half of 1981 placed the party in an absurd position. The media collapsed virtually completely in the face of Fianna Fail's magic budget proposals of Friday, February 12. There was no exposition of the inherent irresponsibility at the heart of that package and of the alarming omens it contained for the future of the economy if Fianna Fail were returned.

There was no investigation of the deep divisions within the LabourParty and of the genuine possibility of there not being the option of a Coalition arrangement after the elecction. And of course there was little exposure of the deep divisions within Fianna Fail which were to lead to such convulsions within days of the election itself.

On top of all this there was no real attempt to investiigate how the political parties were financing the election, thereby exposing the implicit commitments being made by the parties to their financiers.

Instead of this kind of tough reportage, there was a surfeit of "colour" reporting, especially in The Irish Times. There were reams of columns devoted to constituency proofiles along with volumes of speculation and prediction on the outcome of the election. Television was constrained by a film editors work to rule but it made little attempt to do anything other than to present talking heads each night deebating the issues - something which radio was doing very adequately anyway.

Only The Irish Times attempted an analysis of the issues and even there this was swamped by massive dollops of campaign reporting.

This criticism is not at all intended to exclude Magill, we share the culpability. The criticism is intended rather to suggest that we all examine what it is we are supposed to be about and are not distracted from that by wails, especially from Fianna Fail, that we overstepped our role. Of course mistakes were made, inevitably some of the interchanges at press conferences were overheated but the basic criticism of the media in relation to Election '82 is not that we exxceeded our responsibility but that we Inadequately fulfilled it.