Many people in Ireland think that they live in a democracy. However, this is largely an illusion and a few simple examples will demonstrate that fact. Democracy is supposed to be a system of government whereby decisions made by the majority of the people are what is used to guide how a particular country, or society, or organisation is governed.
This would be a very cumbersome form of government if every decision had to go to a vote, and so decision making is broken down by having elections to elect an overall governing body out of which the actual government is then, once again, supposedly democratically elected.
The System is Falsely Engineered
But the core problem remains, that there are many varying opinions often with little clear agreement, and how do you proceed if you cannot get a clear majority. This is where the deceit comes in. The system is falsely engineered in order to allow minority pressure groups to take control of our country and to direct government policy whilst disregarding the majority.
You may not believe me so here are some recent examples.
In May 2018, there were 3,367,556 people eligible to vote in the Referendum to remove the eight amendment to our constitution.
Of those people, 1,429,981 voted to allow the government to legislate for termination of pregnancy. That represents just 42.46% of the electorate.
723,632 voted No to the referendum.
1,207,901 eligible voters, representing 35.87%, did not vote in the referendum and 6,042 voters, 0.18% spoiled their votes.
What this tells us, from a democratic and purely mathematical point of view, is that 1,937,575 or 57.54% of the electorate did not vote to allow the government to legislate to terminate pregnancies. We cannot say how these people would have voted if they had voted, that is pure speculation, but regardless of whether even 90% of them would have voted in favour of allowing the government to terminate pregnancies, the fact remains that 57.54% of the Irish electorate did not give permission to the government to legislate as it has legislated.
Leo Varadkar welcomed the result saying “What we have seen today is the culmination of a quiet revolution [that has been taking place] for the past 10 or 20 years.”
He also said, implicitly denying the existence of a significant number of voters which was more than the number of people who voted for Fine Gael in the 2016 election, “We are actually a nation that is united, and we want to make this change,” In the 2016 general election, Fine Gael secured just 544,130 votes.
So, who is Leo Varadkar?
He is the leader of a small yet influential pressure group known as the Fine Gael party. This is a private organisation, which helps itself to more than 1.5 million euros worth of taxpayers money annually, to pay for party expenses and to help to keep other groups from competing fairly against the Fine Gael party in elections. Their elected members also draw legitimate salaries and questionable expenses from the taxpayer’s pocket.
If you take the Fine Gael Party you will find that in the 2016 general election, they secured just 25.52% of the votes cast or more accurately, they secured just 16.47% of the votes of those registered to vote. They ended up with 49 out of 158 Dáil seats, just over 31%.
83.53% of the Irish Electorate did NOT vote to have Fine Gael in government!
To get the real picture you just need to reverse the figures. 83.53% of the Irish electorate did not vote to have Fine Gael in government. Even if you cut Fine Gael some slack and instead take the figure of those that actually voted in the 2016 general election, you will find that of them, 74.48% did not want Fine Gael in government. Yet this group which represents a minority of voters now governs our country in what is supposed to be a democracy with government of the people.
Leo Varadkar was elected Taoiseach by 57 out of 158 TDs. He represents just over 36% of our elected representatives. Once again, remember to reverse the figures. 64% of our elected representatives did not vote for Leo Varadkar as Taoiseach. He does not represent the majority of our people, far from it. He leads a private political party which commands less than 17% of the electorate and yet he parades around the world stage lecturing to Pope and leaders of other countries as if he is somebody important and as if he speaks for our nation.
The other political parties are determined not to destroy the illusion because they need to play the game if they want to get a share of the power and if they want to get the wishes of their particular pressure group implemented by government. In the 1997 general election for example, the Progressive Democrats, with just 4.7% of the votes cast, on a 67% voter turnout, won 4 out of 166 seats in Dáil Eireann. 95.3% of the people who voted, and an even higher percentage if you take count those who did not vote but were on the electoral register, did not want the Progressive Democrats in Government. Fianna Fáil, in order to maintain power and ignoring the fact that just under 79% of the electorate wanted both Fianna Fáil & Fine Gael to govern our country, decided to share it with a political party that virtually nobody wanted. They acted contrary to the expressed wishes of the vast majority of the electorate who voted.
This is how democracy works in Ireland. We have a corrupt political system, owned and managed mainly by two privately owned pressure groups, who control what happens politically in Ireland. The stranglehold that these two groups have on Irish political life needs to be broken, but it will take considerable time and a concerted effort for this to happen. But it can be done if the will exists.
