Irish people went to the polls yesterday to elect 157 Teachtaí Dála to Dáil Éireann. Whichever party controls the Dáil will be able to appoint the Taoiseach, and control the legislative agenda.
For those of us whose Gaeilge is a bit rusty, that means they’re electing 157 assembly members to the Irish Assembly, and the party or coalition which gains control will be able to appoint a chief minister. There is also Seanad Éireann, which is the Irish Senate, and it is appointed. It doesn’t have the power the US senate has, and is more of an advisory body than a legislative one. We’ll know more in the coming hours, but first, some background. Last time, the Center-ish right-ish party Fine Gael (whose Gaeilge name means Tribe/People of Ireland, and whose name is pronounced FINN-uh Gale) formed a coalition with the largest left-wing, the Labour Party. They then pushed forward a number of austerity policies which attempted to balance the budget on the backs of the poor, especially when it comes to water. Ireland’s water infrastructure is falling apart, and in order to fund much needed infrastructure growth, the coalition decided to begin charging Irish people for water.
While I’m extremely neutral to most folks in Irish politics, I do need to say that the most recent government didn’t really have much of a choice. As anyone who understands MMT can tell you, when you give up sovereign control of your own currency you make public debt impossible. This is by design, and it forces privatization. So basically, the (Usually German and American) banks get to buy everything, even if the public don’t want to sell. That, or they face a much higher price for public services in addition to taxation. One of the main reasons for the chaos we’re seeing is that nobody has communicated a clear path forward, including the current government.
In the case of Irish Water, a good portion of the public are boycotting the water charges. Especially since politicians are apparently getting their water for free.
The exit poll tells us that Irish folks aren’t wedded to the main parties anymore. While the Exit Poll has trouble predicting results under an STV system, it’s not looking very good for the major parties.
STV is called single transferable vote. Voters are given a ballot such as this one from dublin:
Clik here to view.
-and are then asked to rank the candidates in question by number. I.e. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Each seat elects between 3-5 people based on population, and the votes are distributed based on numbered preference. Here are two videos from CGP grey which explain how the STV system works for those who want an in-depth explanation of the topic:
Back to Ireland, when a left-wing and right-wing government come together in a coalition during a time of national emergency you can always bet that one of them is going to come out of it in deep trouble. That’s exactly what happened to the Labour party who have lost a lot of their vote to anti-austerity parties, of which there seem to be dozens.
Fianna Fáil (Pronounced FEE-anna Fal, whose Gaeilge name means “Soldiers of Destiny” or “Warriors of Fál/Ireland,”) has regained a lot of their earlier support. FF is largely blamed by its opponents for bankrupting the country, and are a touch more right wing than their traditional opponents in Fine Gael. If you’ve noticed that Ireland has a right wing party and a center-ish right-ish party, then you’ve noticed the big problem in Irish politics. The left is fractured.
You have Labour, who aren’t trusted because they worked with FG and helped them achieve an austerity agenda. It’s exactly the same thing that happened to the Liberal Democrats in the UK. If you back austerity, and try to balance the budget on the backs of the poor, you will be destroyed as a left-wing institution for at least a generation. You have the Social Democrats who are a new party. You have the Anti-Austerity-Alliance, who have just gotten into a coalition platform with People-Before-Profits, to form the AAA-PBP platform. Then, you have a coalition of independents who think that political parties ought not exist, and run the gamut of political opinions from left to right.
And then you have Sinn Féin (Shin Fayn, meaning We Ourselves, though it’s a bit more poetic since Féin and its Gàidhlig equivalent fhìn are often interchangeable with the word Gael), who are an Irish Republican party. And they have a bit of a smorgasbord of left-wing and right-wing ideas. For example, they’re a pro-life party that is upset with the criminalization of women who have abortions. They still want the act to be illegal… but they talk a good game about it. They’re also extremely anti-austerity.
They’re accused of maintaining ties to the disarmed Provisional IRA, who are in turn accused of not having genuinely disarmed and embraced democracy. The Provos, as they’re often called in Shorthand, have pretty well kept up their side of the Good Friday agreement. There are dissident Republican and British Nationalist groups in Northern Ireland which have not kept to that agreement, however, making the entire situation about as complicated as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The citizens of the Republic are somewhat unfriendly to the more militant stances taken by Sinn Féin on a number of issues. This is a gross oversimplification, of course, but to write a nuanced view of Sinn Féin’s place in the Irish Republic would take a book.
They’re also seen as radically socialist, so there are people looking for a more comfortable (critics of SF would say rational) anti-austerity option. On Economics, they aren’t very trusted. Their support in the polls dropped when the media started asking them economic questions.
And to make the waters even a bit more complicated, because the two major parties, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, are basically right-wing, the left-right divide in Ireland is extremely murky. History complicates matters even further. Every single one of the major political parties, FG, FF, and Labour, all either split off from Sinn Féin at one point, or merged with a party which split from SF, in the case of Labour. There are several minor parties also claiming the name Sinn Féin for themselves.
Furthermore, Ireland is in a time of religious shift. Once, the Catholic Church had its way on most matters and was even enshrined in the Irish Constitution (which is a real thing and an actual document, unlike the imaginary “unwritten” UK Constitution.) But with the death of Sativa Halappanavar who was denied a life-saving abortion procedure still a major issue in Ireland, as well the failure of the RCC to address the horrific levels of sexual abuse, and the successful referendum for Marriage Equality, Ireland is no longer a country which can be called ideologically Catholic. Sinn Féin as a (more civic than ethnic leaning) nationalist party has a lot of traditionalism within it, and so is in an awkward place when it comes to social issues.
So we’re in a place where most people who naturally support the right wing Fianna Fáil have gone back home, and the left-wingers are looking for a place to land, while distrusting the Labour party for helping with Austerity, and not quite sure if they’d like to support Sinn Féin.
It’s a great big mess over in Ireland. Whether a rainbow coalition grows out of this, or the Irish people go back to the polls due to a hung is yet to be seen. Those seem to be the most likely option.
That, or biting the bullet and working with Sinn Féin, which is something that both Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have pledged not to do.
Or even worse, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil might have to go into coalition with each other, which is something they’ve promised not to do.
Results are starting to pour in now. I’ll update this post periodically throughout the day, but it does look like there are going to be rather a lot of smaller parties with seats in Dáil Éireann.
If you saw that ballot before, what is about to happen is multiple counts. Each set of ballots will be counted between three and five times to determine who gets one of the seats within a given constituency. So far, only 13 of 40 first counts have taken place. So there’s a long way to go. I will update this post periodically to reflect the results.
79 Seats are needed to form a government. Here are the current results (live updates):
40/40 First Counts held
Fine Gael — 25
Fianna Fáil — 25
Sinn Féin — 11
Anti-Austerity-Alliance/People-Before-Profit 4
Social Democrats — 3
Independent Alliance — 4
Labour Party — 3
Green Party — 1
No Party/Non Aligned Independent — 8