General Election Roundup: February 18th

One Week Out.

The buzzword this week is 'Overall Majority'. Enda and crew, coming off a brace of debates in which Enda Did Not Make a Fool Of Himself, that is to say a pair of glorious victories, are looking into the home stretch with a real chance of forming the next government alone, or with the help of a few independents. If the People want a red tinge to the next government, they had better go and vote Labour.

Not to say that Gilmore necessarily deserves it. His attempt to position Labour as the stronger partner in the hoped for coalition has not payed off. The posters reading just 'Gilmore for Taoiseach', seem hopelessly naive. Boggling as it may be to accept, Enda has played a smart game, not engaging with his rivals and instead simply pushing policy at every opportunity. There seems a sense in the country now that Fine Gael are the party with ideas and competence, in addition to presumably a bag of fantastical magic dust that they will use to heal our finances.

Of more concern to Fine Gael is the alleged five billion euro 'hole' in their finance plan. What is the hole? Where did it come from? Is it here to harm us? Can we make use of it's advanced technology? No one seems to know the answer to these questions.

Fianna Fail seem to be going down the ah-sure-it-cant-get-any-worse route, with top ministers, (such as they are) coming out with full throated assaults on the policies of the two opposition parties. This approached farce during one of the debates when Micheal Martin alleged that the Labour party would not cut out corruption and cronyism, with the implication being that Fianna Fail have entrenched it so heavily in the country that none can move it.

The RTÉ debate alternated between astonishing boredom and Gerry Adams' occasional moments of Zen-like idiocy, such as when he explained in depth how you could get seven billion euro out of a three billion euro fund. The answer it seemed, was to establish a 32-counties socialist republic, and go on from there. The nation as a whole got sick a little in their mouths as he talked about 'human misery'. This was the one subject that Gerry was intimately familiar with, having caused liberal amounts of it throughout his long and storied terrorism career. All the while Pat hopped from one candidate to another, mangling the audience's questions into faux man-of-the-people soundbites. The whole thing was just like any other episode of the Frontline, except without even the distraction of a mentally unstable man shouting down everyone else because he wants to talk about the Jews, and he will not stop until he does.

Last week I appealed to any God who would listen for a spark of life to force this election out of the dreary forgone conclusion that it is. It appears I should have gone to Mass more.