When Brian Cowen announced on Monday that he will seek to dissolve Dáil Éireann once the vote on the Budget is taken, he in effect signed Fianna Fáil’s death warrant.
The move guarantees a general election early next year. If the public mood of detestation for Fianna Fáil is anything to go by, coupled with the 18/19 per cent poll ratings, the party will be lucky to come back with 40 seats (if they are very lucky ) or, as seems most likely at this stage, 30 seats or fewer.
Election 2011 will see Fianna Fáil representation decimated, losing anything between 30 and 50 seats, being reduced to the third party in the State, and years of being relegated to the Opposition benches.
It is a richly, richly, deserved fate for Brian Cowen. This is the man who believes in loyalty to Fianna Fáil above all else, and for a Fianna Fáil loyalist to have brought the party to the point where it is this reviled is some compensation to the public for the role he has played in destroying our economy, our welfare, and the sovereignty of our State.
The EU/IMF, in the words of The Irish Times will exercise “external oversight of the performance of the economy for at least three years”. The next Government will be beholden to them and it also emphasis how little power we as citizens have.
We have very little power over what is going to happen, except our power to choose who sits in the Dáil and this is why we must exercise our right to vote in January.
Election 2011 will be a cathartic experience for Irish citizens. It is our chance to punish, and punish harshly, Fianna Fáil for the years of misrule it has inflicted on the State - Anglo, the property bubble, its opposition to the three by-elections, and last week’s denials that the bailout was coming, etc.
Seeing Cowen and Fianna Fáil driven from office and into near obscurity, knowing that at last we had a chance to send a direct message of exactly what we think of them will be a positive way to vent our anger and frustration over the situation in which they have left us.
The next government will be Fine Gael and Labour, but as voters we owe it to ourselves to use our vote carefully, wisely, and positively. The next Government’s power will be curtailed, but we can still use our vote to send out a strong message to Labour/FG that we expect them to see the old elite removed and an utter transformation of Irish society and institutions undertaken.
So the next question we need to ask of ourselves is: ‘What questions do I demand that anyone running for the Dáil can answer to my satisfaction?’
