Turkeys won't be voting for Christmas

Believe me. If we had politicians who understood what they are doing we wouldn’t be looking down the barrel of a General Election on Christmas Week. We may be. As some may know I’ve skin in the game on both sides. I’m a proud Labour member but I’m also related to the Tánaiste. She’s a decent person who’s made her contribution as the state’s first Minister for Children. She drove the Children’s referendum and has made this state a better place for children to grow up in. I know here and I’ve met her.

To summarise where we are; Sargent Maurice McCabe is a man who is above reproach in my view. Garda legal advice to a tribunal indicated a strategy to undermine him with a trumped up charge while at the same time he was being hailed as a whistle blower who Leo Varadkar called distinguished. The strategy was advised to the Department of Justice and was referred to the Minister with an advice to her that the matter was not for her to determine. This advice was re-inforced by the AG.

But we live in a world where what happens in the media shapes our evaluation of a person.Many will point to how this week’s controversy of the email emerging from the ether after 2 years and will ask, just how does that happen? Some more of us might ask, who sent the email to her and indeed point to the fortuitous stroke of luck that the Department of Justice’s Secretary General announced his retirement a week before the whole controversy re-ignited. 

Aine Lawlor’s dogged determination during a radio interview that over ran the ad break spelt trouble as questions piled up.  The spiralling crisis sees a supposedly united Fine Gael behind her. I suspect that’s not the case. I seriously doubt that there are many  FG TD’s happy to lose their seats over this.

So out of the blue we’re supposed to be heading for an election over a Tánaiste who doesn’t remember something that happened a while back? Doesn’t that ring a bell?

Out of the blue in 1990, Charlie Haughey sacked Tánaiste Brian Lenihan in the face of a threat by the PD’s to walk out of government.  Within 15 months, Haughey was gone from office. Within another 9 months the first FF coalition was hammered at an election as the party was paralysed in office by a tribunal into the beef industry. History may well be repeating itself. 

Whatever the outcome, big stakes are being played for.  It’s like playing pass the parcel with a time bomb. Nobody wants to be seen holding the parcel when the bomb of an election goes off.

That’s why I think this matter should not lead to an election. It will be diffused. There’s more reasons to hang together than to hang separately. Brexit negotiations about the border, Repealing the eight although collapsing that may appeal to some in FF and FG and of course the ongoing housing crisis.

Otherwise the 2 main parties deserve to lose votes and seats in an election. Christmas is all about Santa Claus, but I don’t see FF or FG gifting seats back to where they won them less than 2 years ago.

And at the back of it all is Sargent McCabe and his family.  They deserve the justice of the tribunal and answers as to why he was vicitimised. We the electorate deserve to be able to trust the Garda again. Will an election deliver either by Christmas? No I don’t think so either.

Someone is going to blink. Either FF will pull back or Frances Fitzgerald will resign on mature reflection of  the consequences for the country of an election. But that only buys time, the trust that the government was based on is gone.

But here’s another question. Who’d enter a supply and confidence arrangement with FF after the General Election? Nobody would. That’s  why a FF/SF government is now a step nearer. 

Dictators are like Dublin buses, there'll be another along sooner or later.

“Welcome to Zimbabwe” said the man to me on Victoria Bridge less than 5 months ago. “Why, thank you”, I replied, “But I’ve been here before”, I said. “When” asked the gentleman getting more interested in me as I reached for my passport.

 “Five minutes ago” I said pointing out the group of students in my care to the gentleman that I was trying to drag away from hawkers who were swapping souvenirs for teashirts. I was rounding them up so that we could all return to Livingstone. 

The peace and quiet of the main road into the country was broken now and then by a lorry passing through the no mans land through which I had earlier strolled towards a border post where little seemed to be going on. President Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe seemed to have had down time that day.

“You see”, I said to my friend on the border. “I’m a little like your president, I'm hard to  get rid ” says I with a dead pan face to the man who I reckoned might well be a policeman.  Talk about a conversation killer. An embarrassed silence followed as I went about my way. Minutes later, the bartering done we were back inside Zambia and heading to the bright lights of Livingstone.

The trip to Zimbabwe came at the tail end of the CBS Immersion trip to Zambia. A bit of sight seeing before heading home after doing voluntary work. The day had started well with a casual stroll around the city centre.  Hanging around outside my hostel were a few lads trying to make a shilling by selling Zimbabwe currency as souvenirs.  Trillion dollar notes for about 50 cent.  The Zim wasn’t worth the paper it was written on. Hyper inflation on a scale not seen since the collapse of the mark 100 years ago has undermined the economy and destroyed agriculture, the mainstay of the rural economy. 

As our bus turned right to break for the border, 4 lorries packed with Zimbabwean migrant workers drove past us heading right up the hill taking them to pick fruit on a farm on the outskirts of the town.A chance meeting on a road when you've a bit of time on his hands makes you wonder what type of lives these people lead.

But I wasn’t finished with Zimbabwe. On the way home our flight stopped over in Harare.  Coming in to land gave me my first glimpse of an eerily quite city on an African afternoon. Nothing stirred. The airport apron was empty except for my aircraft. I got up to walk around the jet as we refuelled. There was hardly a soul to be seen. A man got on to clean and remove waste.  And within 20 minutes we were gone.  Africa is full of busy bustling places as people mill around mostly by foot.  I saw nobody in my time as a guest of Robert Mugabe.

It was the second time I’d been in a fundamentally dysfunctional state.  In my 20’s I’d visited the DDR.  Zimbabwe has all the tell tale signs of the old DDR. A currency that is worthless in the wider economy. A leader who is old and hanging on to power and his yesterdays.  Citizens voting with their feet when their voices aren’t listened to. And the daddy of them all is the corruption.

At least in Zimbabwe the military stepped in to put an end to the shambles. The military picked their moment to strike. But who will come next?  That is the real question. Will there be a free and fair elections under a new constitution that guarantees Zimbabweans their rights?

My concern is that the next leader will be a ZANU-PF nominee who will want to carry on as before with the Mugabe’s as history rather than accountable.  That  would make today’s events a missed opportunity.