What kind of country do you want?

Photo Credit: @alanearly on twitter

I was raised in blissful ignorance of party politics. While some families in my village practically stapled elections posters to their toddlers’ cheruby cheeks, the trees and telegraph poles outside our house remained unmolested. My parents, for whatever reason, refused to tell me how they voted, or where their allegiances lay. By keeping schtum, they saved me from one of our nations’ many curses – political tribalism.

They couldn’t, unfortunately, save me from that other Irish plague. As a recent emigrant, (and as I’m sure you’re all sick of hearing) I don’t have a vote in tomorrow’s election. But this ballot will shape the country I hope to one day return to, so in this small space I’d like to add my voice to that conversation.

I’d like to start, by saying a big fat thank you to Lucinda Creighton. Her comments on gay marriage rights have done us a number of favours, but more than anything, they’ve reminded everyone where Fine Gael stand on some important issues. Creighton is the Fine Gael spokesperson for Equality, who thinks convenience of reproduction is enough to deny certain rights to certain citizens, and would prefer if we all said no more about it. She’s a blue-in-the-face blue-shirt, sick and tired of repeating herself to you pesky voters.

In the backlash against her now well-publicised comments, she’s found an interesting though perhaps unsurprising ally. Not people who agree with her per se, or those who don’t support civil rights, per se. Just those of the opinion that we have bigger deficits to tackle. These people haven’t gone as far as supporting Lucinda, but have definitely become exasperated with her detractors, insisting that we should all pipe down because one way or the other, the country’s poor now.

Seriously? It’s a truly sorry state of affairs when equality becomes a luxury item. A commodity to forgo in the lean week before payday. Bankrupt we may be, but did the bailiffs take our sense of right and wrong? Of respect and tolerance?

There’s been a rising sense in the latter days of this election that Fine Gael are best equipped to fix the country’s economy. Maybe they are, but this change in government will mean little if not accompanied by a change in perspective. Our crippled economy has to be a priority, granted, but if we remain consumed solely by money, then what have we learned?

Best-case scenario; Fine Gael fix the economy. For whom? As Vincent Browne pointed out in yesterday’s Irish Times, Fine Gael will defer to a wealthy elite. As he also suggests, they will roll out “cuts in jobseeker’s allowances… cuts in [benefits]… fewer teachers; more illiteracy, more inequality, more poverty.”

How long will it take this Celtic Phoenix to warm your hearth? Or will its clipped wings be in stark absence to the wings you yourself will need for emigrating (figures still stand at 100,000 projected to leave Ireland over next two years)?

In the meantime, what damage is done?

I’ve been watching Janelle Monae’s video for “Many Moons” as I wrote this. It briefly crossed my mind whether the dystopian glamour of her metropolis was a vision of an FG future, before realising that even if it is, I won’t be a privileged guest at the show. I, along with many of those I care about, will be the performing pleb-droids, crunking ‘til we fritz.

There is no doubt (in my mind at least) that Fine Gael represents a slow erosion of the social and cultural progress that Ireland has made in my lifetime. In terms of diversity, in terms of our horizons, in terms of what it is to be Irish.We’ve build more than housing estates over the last 20 years, and it’s important to remember that.

So ask yourself, what kind of country do you want?

If you go to the polls, and decide our economic recovery is paramount, that we’re too poor to worry abut minorities and civil rights, then so be it. No one can accuse you of not having the country’s interest at heart. But please don’t be surprised if you’re not on Fine Gael’s guest list either. Don’t cry foul if we’re all Enda’s n***ers by Monday.

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