We’ve come to expect lies... but not on our own doorstep
THE Sinn Féin/IMRA (now that’s something with a familiar ring to it) conspiracy of lying through their teeth to ordinary members of the public to better feel the political pulse is utterly nauseating. This week it was revealed that Sinn Féin orchestrated deliberate and multiple acts of deception by having party members pose as representatives of a fake marketing company – the self-styled Irish Market Research Agency (IMRA) – when carrying out political surveys at private households before and after elections.
The fact that somebody as senior and persuasive as Eoin Ó Broin would dismiss this outrageous trickery and political fraud as a matter of little or no importance merely adds insult to injury.
When this story first broke it had the whiff of the ‘slightly constitutional’ about it. And one was forced to consider the usual pleas of mitigation, including the journey Sinn Féin has made over the past two decades from being strict apologists for political treachery and unspeakable violence to a position today where it can even say that some of what its ‘freedom fighters’ got up to was ‘wrong’.
AH, SURE we all know how the Shinners need a bit more time to become properly house trained. Be patient. Until it emerged that our four green field defenders weren’t exactly on a solo run when it came to lying, cheating and duplicitous market research tactics.
They were all at it – with the exception of Labour and the Social Democrats. In truth, Labour probably reckoned it knew it was in for a hiding anyway and didn’t need to put itself through the additional trauma of being told so by punters on their doorsteps.
Leo Varadkar came out with his hands up, admitting the very same thing as what Sinn Féin had been mauled for in the media all day Wednesday. Then Taoiseach Micheál Martin did the same on behalf of Fianna Fáil, saying the party ended its market research betrayal of trust as far back as 2007, only to be contradicted by Bertie Ahern who said it never happened at all. You decide.
Simon Harris must have felt the equivalent of a political plonker after saying that Sinn Féin’s market-research tactics were ‘sinister’, only to learn hours later that the Blueshirts were at it as well.
However, discovering that most political parties couldn’t lie straight in bed for you is hardly like finding a cure for cancer. We’ve had much more than mere hints of that forever – but to our faces, AND on our own doorsteps?
Are we not entitled to know who we’re really talking to when somebody comes ringing our doorbell? Especially when those very people want to take almost complete control of our lives on the basis of trust?
It’s an internal friction point of the democratic system that politicians are inveterate liars – a seed of destruction we must always guard against.
This, however, is one of the more egregious examples of that seed sprouting.
TRAGICALLY, we’ve become so inured, so vaccinated by time and frequency, to blatant political perjury (think Boris Johnson and Putin’s pal Donald Trump as the more prominent international examples) that the understandable response is nothing more than a resigned shrug of the shoulders. Against all our interests, vigilance has dulled.
This week, in contrast, we also witnessed a decidedly more truthful example of politics from new US president Joe Biden. His dressing down of Boris Johnson over the Northern Protocol was immense and he told US military personnel stationed in Britain that he was on his way to meet Vladimir Putin to tell him ‘what he wants him to know’. Welcome to the returned Yank.
Biden’s reasserting of US democratic leadership globally signals a return to the language of freedom in a world tilting towards extremism, courtesy of Putin, Xi Jinping and, to a lesser extent, Viktor Orbán in Hungary.
The Data Protection Commissioner will now investigate if our political parties broke the law by their market research deceit. Martin, Varadkar and Mary Lou McDonald must be quaking in their boots.
Political leaders really do need to up their game. As the man in the insurance ad says: Let’s try better.