The Power, the Glory & the Poor

"I'm not going to vote," she said. Brian Lenihan tut-tutted. "You must use your vote," he chided. "Vote for somebody. That's the democratic system." She leaned against the doorpost, head swathed in a towel. "It's your system," she said coldly as the children crawled in and out the door and her friend wheeled a pram full of old clothes into the hallway. "It's not my system. I'm not going to vote." By Olivia O'Leary

So she didn't want to vote. There were a lot of people who did not feel the passionate urge to rush down to their local polling station and choose between Garret FitzGerald and Charlie Haughey. They had other choices, indeed they did. There was Labour. There was Sinn Fein, the Workers' Party. There was a local Communist Party candidate. But she simply didn't believe in the system. It hadn't offered individual salvation, and she hadn't yet been moved to think in class-terms. Poverty isolates.

And the point came home in its starkest terms for the Labour Party. "What can you do for us" mumbled the poor on the dingy doorsteps. Sometimes the answer came pat; a twenty-five per cent increase in social welfare was what the Coalition budget offered - the price of keeping 'em quiet. Occasionally, exotica like the National Development Corporation or the Youth Employment Agency were dangled. But they didn't mean much to people who have stopped hoping. Met with that hopeless silence, the canvasser left his card quietly and moved on. 

Of the three main parties in the system, it will always be hardest for Labour to satisfy. They've chosen to represent the needy, and the needy need plenty.

In Kilmore, in Dublin North Central Fine Gael canvassed the other day in a corporation estate. As they went from door to door, two stolen cars careered around the estate, garda squad cars and sirens chasing them. In that context, the democratic process looked a bit fragile.

Garret FitzGerald dropped in on Coolock Garda Station, on a series of worthy visits during his last campaign day. Three senior garda officers sat him down and towered over him determinedly as they tried to explain how bad things were. They were undermanned, they said, but that was only half the battle. They were losing control in areas like Killmore, they said. There were too many unemployed youngsters.

Juvenile crime was their main headache. Couldn't he provide something? A Government training centre, something? "Yes, but training for what?" asked Garret. "Jobs are the important thing. You can't train them and then not give them a job." Couldn't a community scheme be organised to create jobs, asked Garret brightly. Couldn't the commmunity in the area decide on a job it wanted done and put the youngsters to doing it?

The Gardai considered this glumly. They obviously thought the community couldn't organise itself in or out of a hat, otherwise it wouldn't be in such a mess.

Garret went on to talk of speeding up the detection and conviction of crime. The guards weren't impressed. There weren't enough judges sitting, and anyway there was no room in the jails, said the Gardai gloomily.

No jobs, no judges, no jails. The buying-off process isn't working, nor should it work. The welfare cheque is not the proudest proof of citizenship. There are a growing number of people in this country who have no reason anymore to defend democracy.

Perhaps that is why this campaign seemed so empty, so very second-hand? "Let's set the books in order and then we'll solve the economic crisis," says the Government. But at whose expense are the books ordered? And has all the tough talk about job-sharing and overtime bans been anything but talk? "We'll do a better job, honestly," says the opposition. Will they, indeed? The beaches are still littered with the wrecked boats from that rising tide. The poor stay poor, and quiet, and ominously quiet.

OK, OK, so this is supposed to be a razzmatazz piece about the colourful campaign, the power and the glory. But there wasn't any glory and there's damn little power left. Fine Gael put on a good show, from the bands and fireworks point of view. Haughey's tour was more austere (there may be sound financial reasons for that, i.e. unsound party finances).

As for Michael O'Leary, well Micko, you know, diminished in stature as every day passed. From puny, he shrank to Lilliputian. Micko believes if you repeat an answer often enough, the press will get bored and stop asking you questions. He's right. The press did get bored and stopped asking him questions. Micko became about as relevant to this whole campaign as Sean D. Dublin Bay How Will I Vote Loftus - Don Juan and Don Quixote flamencoed unnoticed on top of their respective mad hats.

First Micko tells us that there's no doubt about Labour going into coalition if the two coalition parties win a majority - when even the most proper and unconspiratorial member of the parliamentary party, Mervyn Taylor, insisted on television that approval would have to come from both the parliamentary party and the Administrative Council. Oh, I'll consult with them, sniffed Micko dismissively. So they can say no? "We'll be going into government if we get a coalition majority," says Micko. Consultation for confirmation only, it seems. It may not seem that way to the Administrative Council.

Then there was the National Development Corporation press conference shambles. The scheme was obviously still in preparation and therefore only half worked out, but Micko could have briefed himself better. His civil servants held their heads in their hands. Micko was eaten alive by the impatient press.

Then, at his final press conference, when O'Leary was thoroughly ignored after the initial declarations about certainty of participation in Government, Garret FitzGerald fielded him a nice gentle question about the wonderful ways of the NDC.

Yes, snapped Micko, sulkily, the NDC would encourage more State enterprise. That was all he said. Silence and twitching from the ignored Micko.

Then somebody asked sharply what O'Leary's adviser, David Grafton, was doing on the platform. Was he still being paid by the State and yet appearing on a political platform? Grafton was quite ready to answer the quesstion: yes, he was being paid from the Exchequer, and through O'Leary's Department of Energy, though up to a short time ago he worked for the Department of Finance. "Mr. Grafton resigned from the Department of Finance the day after the Budget," snapped Micko. But wasn't he still being paid by the taxpayer, pressed the questioner? "Mr. Grafton resigned from the Department of Finance the day after the Budget," intoned Micko. Which was about as relevant as anything Micko said during the campaign.

As for Garret FitzGerald, he fought a hard campaign, he toured the country, he didn't do as badly on television as his previous performances might have suggested he would do. But Garret still wants to score without getting too sweaty. His central theme was that he would handle the people's books honestly, and therefore he needed to show, if the point was to mean anything, that Charlie Haughey hadn't handled them as the people should expect.

Yet, when he decided to use the real piece of dynamite about the Haughey regime - the unprecedented refusal of the Central Bank to lend money to Haughey's government, Garret lit the fuse so delicately that he allowed it to fizzle out. He couldn't reveal the terms of the refusal, private correspondence of the Central Bank to civil servants, he said. The accusation hung in the air, half-made. Was the press to make it whole for him? If Garret wants to be trusted and believed, the whole truth might help.

As for Mr. Haughey, Mr. Haughey had a bad enough time, but Martin O'Donoghue bailed him out. Martin produced one of his magic plans. Is there an economist in the country who will stand over it? But then economists don't know anything about people. Martin knows a lot about people now, it seems.

Martin has found it possible to try to win an election for a person that he once said of whom he had no wish to serve in cabinet. Now this is a unique achievement in terms of the great flexibility of the human spirit. This is people winning over mere ideas, or should one say ideals?

Now does everybody understand Martin's position? He doesn't defend Charlie's last eighteen months in Governnment. He's not propping up Charlie's leadership. Did you notice that? Did it come over clearly in those cosy pictures at the press conferences and on the steps of the Departtment of Finance?

You didn't notice it? No, I found it somewhat obscure myself. Martin, unlike all good men, came to the aid of the party leader, not just the party. Martin used to be an ecoonomist; and he used to say he'd no wish to serve in a cabinet under Charles Haughey. Now he's just people.

Aren't people fascinating?