Election 2020 – stop with the self harm ireland…

The Gen­er­al Elec­tion is already effec­tive­ly under­way and it looks like it will be for­mal­ly announced in the com­ing days. It’s already being pitched by the media as a pres­i­den­tial style elec­tion whose main pur­pose will be to decide if Leo Varad­kar or Michael Mar­tin will be Taoiseach. To those suf­fer­ing in this coun­try – whichev­er of those two sits in the Taoiseach’s office will make absolute­ly no dif­fer­ence – Unite’s Bren­dan Ogle explains why.

We are told con­stant­ly now that the Gen­er­al Elec­tion is already effec­tive­ly under­way and it looks like it will be for­mal­ly announced in the com­ing days. It’s already being pitched by the media as a pres­i­den­tial style elec­tion whose main pur­pose will be to decide if Leo Varad­kar or Michael Mar­tin will be Taoiseach. Here’s the news, to those suf­fer­ing in this coun­try – whichev­er of those two sits in the Taoiseach’s office will make absolute­ly no dif­fer­ence – and here’s why.

Hous­ing cri­sis has become an emer­gency.

Michael Mar­tin was an inte­gral and sup­pli­cant part of suc­ces­sive Bertie Ahern/Fianna Fáil led Gov­ern­ments which wrecked this coun­try in order to facil­i­tate their builder and banker bud­dies. He sat in high office at every sin­gle cab­i­net meet­ing and vot­ed for every ‘light touch reg­u­la­tion’ mea­sure, mea­sures that caused or cre­at­ed:

– the finan­cial crash

– a loss of eco­nom­ic sov­er­eign­ty

– the pub­lic bailout of a rot­ten pri­vate bank­ing sys­tem

– a troi­ka bailout of the coun­try that has cost this and future gen­er­a­tions tens of bil­lions of Euro (€65billion)

– mass emi­gra­tion of over 300,000 of our young peo­ple and fam­i­lies

– a mas­sive trans­fer of wealth from the poor and mid­dle, to the rich and reck­less

These mea­sures led direct­ly to a trag­ic sui­cide epi­dem­ic and indi­rect­ly to an his­tor­i­cal­ly trag­ic hous­ing emer­gency. Michael Mar­tin and the deci­sions he silent­ly took at the cab­i­net table result­ed in the loss of life, light and hope and has blight­ed the futures of our youngest.

Patients on trol­leys is at an all time high.

Leo Varad­kar has been Taoiseach less than three years but he has been a Min­is­ter and senior cab­i­net mem­ber since 2011. In that time he has vot­ed to:

– impose aus­ter­i­ty on the coun­try to push the sins of the rich onto the shoul­ders of the rest

– make sure the rich­est in our soci­ety cur­rent­ly car­ry the low­est tax bur­den they have had to car­ry in decades

– he has tried, and failed, to com­mod­i­fy and pri­va­tise our water

– he has turned a home­less­ness cri­sis into a hous­ing emer­gency sim­ply to enrich the prop­er­ty and land­lord class his par­ty exists to rep­re­sent

– he is the Taoiseach of tax haven Ire­land, suing the EU to try to let the rich­est cor­po­ra­tion in the world keep €13billion it has been found to owe in tax­es

– this week our health sys­tem plumbed new depths and the num­ber of patients on trol­leys hit a new high, all presided over by this for­mer Min­is­ter for Health and Doc­tor!

And what was the Taoiseach doing this week while this was hap­pen­ing?

He was try­ing to find a way to com­mem­o­rate crown forces who 100 years ago fought might and main to stop the very state itself from being cre­at­ed.

Of course for many who are secure in their homes, their jobs, their pen­sions, their sav­ings or oth­er­wise, things have improved from the abyss of ten years ago. The banks we the peo­ple bailed out are lend­ing again, even evict­ing some of those who bailed them out, or sell­ing their homes to vul­ture funds.

In addi­tion ‘lep­rechaun eco­nom­ics’ allows mas­sive growth lev­els to be claimed. Our tax haven sta­tus allows it to look like the books are a bit bet­ter. Pre­car­i­ous work, and labour and human rights abus­es in sec­tors like hos­pi­tal­i­ty (and oth­ers), make it look like there are lots of jobs, and if you are pre­pared to work for near noth­ing in one of the most expen­sive cities in the world that may even be the case.

Yet for many there is no home they can real­is­ti­cal­ly afford, no job they are secure in, no pay that is enough, no pen­sion they can plan for, no sin­gle tier health sys­tem they can fall back on when sick, no house or fam­i­ly or future they can save for and look for­ward to.

We live in a coun­try where those of us who sim­ply want homes for our peo­ple, who want fair and just tax­a­tion, who want a liv­ing wage for all and a health sys­tem that is the same for poor peo­ple as it is for rich peo­ple are pre­sent­ed by the media as extrem­ists. And yet those who have caused eco­nom­ic and near social break­down, who have bailed out the reck­less, and who have caused death, despair and hope­less­ness are unques­tion­ing­ly allowed to present them­selves as ‘hold­ing the cen­tre’.

Whether Leo Varad­kar or Michael Mar­tin is Taoiseach this coun­try is run for the few, on the backs of the many.

Guess what, Irish peo­ple who vote – and espe­cial­ly those who don’t both­er at all – allow them to do this? Are we going to allow our votes be used for it to stay like that for­ev­er?

ENDS