Electoral Contempt

dublin | politics / elections | opinion/analysis Wednesday January 13, 2016 19:01 by S.C. Carroll syllser at safemail dot net

They want your vote but won't tell you when.

Fine Gael canvas through the letterbox for an election they have not even announced.

Canvassing for votes for the election with no date.

The pamphlet pictured was delivered to many homes in the Dublin 4 and surrounding areas today, January 13th. It might not look like anything to get too excited by or even pay much attention to but it is quite a remarkable document in its own right. For the first time in the experience of this writer Fine Gael have started actively canvassing for votes in an election that has been given no date yet. In a rather flagrant display of how removed this particular political class have become from the citizens of the country they are happy to ask us to vote for them but don't have the decency to tell us when.
But its actually more serious than this somewhat trite interpretation. The people of Ireland are being treated like consumers not citizens. Even if the law is not in place to protect the citizens from such ludicrous political machinations this should not allow the government to ask us to vote for their representatives prior to announcing the date of an election. There must be protocol to these matters and such propaganda should not be allowed through letterboxes prior to the actual election date announcement. Remember there are strict laws in relation to political canvassing and the environment; posters must come down from telegraph poles within a 3 week time frame after the election and such like. Seemingly our poles are more important than our people. At least that must be the case if the governing political party are allowed to push these messages into people's homes when the electorate has yet to be given the most fundamental information required, ie when it gets to vote.
There are better reasons not to return these people to office but in this particular case they seem to want to remind you of your place as merely a potential voter rather than the citizen you are, so maybe you should start thinking about how to remind them of theirs; servants not leaders. Just in case there is any doubt the two individuals in question are Eoghan Murphy and Kate O'Connell. They want your vote but don't expect them to treat you like a citizen once they have it.