Madam, – Kevin Sheehan is wrong to advocate that “The best antidote to this national malaise must be to hold a general election” (April 27th). It is time to do what they did in 1916, and wipe the slate clean. We now live in a failed State, on the brink of collapse, meaning an imminent loss of sovereignty. We must either hand over our nation to the IMF, or struggle to find a way to take it back from the current State.
A general election will not prevent the meltdown, nor undo the damage done by decades of inept and corrupt decision-making, by putting new toes into old shoes. We, the Irish people, need to set up a new political system and renew the nation, not the republic, which is more tyranny than democracy, more pantomime than participatory.
Mr Sheehan writes, “A government with a current mandate to rule may be the catalyst to turn the national psyche around.” We must turn the national psyche around first, and then create a new government.
Coalition governments have no mandate. They are cooked up in smoky back rooms, not voted for at the ballot box. Any coalition government, made up of opposing political parties, is a recipe for disaster, with the junior member basically operating as an opposition party within government itself, creating division in the very place where solidity and unity are the essentials to effective leadership.
Eamon Gilmore has offered to let the people write a new constitution, if we put him into coalition government (April 19th). These are big plans from a small party, which will have no mandate of its own to be in power. We don’t need Mr Gilmore or the Labour Party’s invitation, or permission, to draft a new constitution. We can do it ourselves without the interference of any of the petty political parties. We can set up a new Dáil, like they did with the Revolutionary Dáil, and simply negate the existing Government, including the so-called Opposition, in its entirety.
Setting up a new Irish nation-state, based on our national traditions of fairness and integrity, would automatically void Nama, and reverse many of the bad decisions. We can use those billions saved to help people save their homes and start businesses, which will generate real value, and real national international confidence in the Irish nation once more.
I appeal to all Irish people to urgently form a national summit, and look at all of the possibilities and opportunities that we still have, not just the limited ones we are being offered by political parties.
Let us take direct responsibility and make our own decisions in a truly inspiring, open and democratic fashion, on how we are going to rescue our future from the hands of those who have breached our trust.
The Irish people have all the talent and resources we need to remake this great nation, and it is simply insane for us to sit back and allow ourselves be herded into the hands of the IMF, or onto ships to American and Australia. Let all the failed political leaders take the ships this time.
We must become “a nation once again”, and reclaim our power and birthright, if we are truly to honour the heroic men and women of 1916, 1798, 1641, 1169, and of every year in between. If they were here today, that’s exactly what they would do, but not with guns; with the hearts and minds and voices that they gave us. – Yours, etc,