Daniel Sullivan - he’s a little political

Of gender, jobs and quotas

// July 5th, 2010 // No Comments » // elections

Over on political reform one of the most commented pieces in recent times concerns the description of the new Fine Gael front bench as ‘Male, stale and pale’. This description is in itself ironic given the complete absence of any women in the self described progressive parties like the current SF line up or even the Green party in the last Dail. Labour do better it’s true as a portion of their Dáil representation but that has as much to do with their small size as anything one or two more TDs less than they have now and their portion drops in double digit percentages.

In the comments and cited in evidence of the experience of female candidates is a survey from the National Women’s Council of Ireland, which to be honest reads like a whine  list or litany of awful things from the campaign trail that anyone who has stood in an election could offer up, whether male or female. I had a canvasser of mine who was hunted from a doorstep in a urban Dublin area by someone brandishing what they thought was a shotgun!

I would contend that an alternative view to the notion of quotas might be that we should have an electoral system that did not serve to penalise political parties for taking chances on candidates, whether male or female, who the parties fear the electorate might potentially decide to be wrong for them. This would allow the parties to be run as many candidates as were interested in offering themselves for consideration and it would be up to the public to decide who they wanted.

The fact is that PR-STV can work as a form of instant primary but parties do not do so as the issues of the potential of low transfers between party candidates might ultimately cost them seats. If total national seat allocation was based on the portion of the national vote received with the constituency election being a means to choose which specific individuals got the seat we might see more people take a chance along with parties being more willing to take that chance with them. The national seat distribution could be topped with those party or even non-party candidates who had the highest vote without being elected at the constituency level.

The other issues being raised about the nature of politics that is supposedly off putting to women, clubbishness and so on strikes me as missing the point. Convincing people to vote for you and support a course of action you advocate requires things like building alliances,  being somewhat thick skinned about personal comments etc. All of this effort against what is human behaviour is a bit like suggesting that sport X should change its rules so that more people who are currently unsuited to it could play it. But it would cease to be the sport it was. If you think soccer players should be able to catch the ball go play rugby or football, if you think people shouldn’t be able to make such rough tackles in football then play soccer. If you think that people shouldn’t club together to achieve their collective aims then electoral politics isn’t for you.

I hate to be citing Big Brother as empirical evidence of much of anything but the fact that the female contestants picked one another off while the males tended to club together until such time as they absolutely had to fight amongst themselves says something even if it’s hard to be 100% sure what it is.

Those negative comments from the NWCI Survey could be as easy found by asking male candidates of their experiences too, as I was a candidate at one time below are a few responses to the comments I’d add. The ‘quoted’ remarks are from the NCWI post on the survey

‘Negative comments from women [like] ‘politics is no place for a woman’ and ‘isn’t your husband great to be allowing you to do this’, to ‘don’t forget to make time for your children and don’t neglect you family’ really annoyed me. At the first council meeting, I was referred to as the ‘new girl’.

DK - I was in my 30s and even then most members of the party thought of me as a lad barely out of short trousers. Older people in Ireland are incredibly patronising of younger people, it’s not about gender.

‘And one elderly man on the doorstep said he would vote for me because ‘you would be handy for cooking them dinner in the council’ - he didn’t intend to be rude, but that was his truth”

DK - If people are put off by every negative comment and experience on a door step then they’ve no place contesting an election. Ask anyone who has contested an election and they will regale you with horror stories of craziness and abuse they’ve experienced. It will be a minority of people that behaviour like this but out of 100,000 people even 0.1% is a 100 people. The fact that I’d worked in IT lead some voters to think I’d be great for fixing the PCs in the council.

‘As I was on the ticket with a male, I was mostly ignored at the doors, unless I happened to be on my own - even when male party members were canvassing with me, the public tended to speak to them, not me.’

DK - It is your job as the candidate to make an impression on the voters, it is not the voter’s job to single you out. Be pushy, assert yourself. Why would someone choose to vote for someone to speak up for them when they don’t even spoke up for themselves? Remember you’ve come to their home, you have to convince them to chose you above all others.

‘Some women commented that as a young woman, I should be happy to be married and have children, not get into politics’

DK - I recall research from Liam Weeks at UCC on the 2004 local elections that showed that the worst for voting for young women were older women. But it is ironic that, if in part the under representation of women in politics is due to the behaviour of women voters that, the solution is to reward this behaviour by having a quota for those same women! Believe me a quota system won’t be seeing loads of 20 something women getting elected.

‘I stay in it (politics) because I want to continue making a difference in my area and to influence policy within a larger party, but it is frustrating!’

DK - Politics is incredible frustrating, if you can’t cope with frustration then knocking on thousands of doors isn’t for you. This like people complaining that they’d be Olympic distance champions only that they found the hours and hours of training to be really boring. If you can’t do the work involved in the training then don’t expect to get the medals. And political change takes place over decades, not a few months or years.

‘Women found it encouraging seeing a young female candidate seeking re-election’

‘Intimidation and bully tactics are still a very prevalent part of party politics. While existing female councillors are tolerated, obstacles and barriers are put in place to prevent further new female candidates from entering politics’

DK - Bullying or overbearing behaviour is common in lots of jobs, but  let’s face you have to have some sort of ego to stand in front of the public and ask that they vote for you not someone else. If you can’t cope with encountering overbearing egos then representative politics isn’t for you.

‘[There is a] Paternalistic attitude within the political party. Assumptions made that I am in more need of advice because I am a woman. Mostly among older men. Men in their 20s and 30s treat women equally on the whole’

DK - anyone who is on the younger side in any organisation will have any number of older people trying to bend their ear to provide them with the benefit of their advice and experience. Even if much of it is useless and repetitive. You will get the same from the voters. Learn listen and if it’s of any use then great but mostly you’re humouring people.

An Irish liberal party - what about a progressive caucus instead

// February 22nd, 2010 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

In performing a little exercise set for me by Jason O Mahony I was given to thinking about the calls that come every once in a while from some quarters that we should have new Liberal party or similar in the absence of the PDs. I would oppose such an idea for a number of reasons that I won’t bore you with right now but I do think there might be an opening not for a new political party as such but rather for the emergence of the American style caucus model in Irish politics.

The point would be to have a broad viewpoint, in this case, one that is liberal/libertarian and then at election time to endorse individual candidates who were amenable to those beliefs. The caucus would literally talk, on-line for the most part, about policies and political principles that it should advocate and seek support for.

I’m not suggesting that we’d get too many takers at the outset from the existing public reps, in particular TDs, but it might be better anyway to start by appealing to members of all parties and none.

So I might, in the next short while, try and drop some worms in the water and see if anyone bites.

Killian Forde and the Moguls of Irish politics

// January 11th, 2010 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

The departure/defection/eloping of Cllr Killian Forde from Sinn Fein to the Labour party appears to be causing considerably more discussion that the earlier leavings of Christy Burke or Louise Minihan.

While this is perhaps because he has left and joined another party, it is also possibly because it was more about policy and the party’s overall direction rather than what was happening on the ground in particular wards or constituencies. We’re all aware that Christy Burke was less than impressed with the shenanigans around the Dublin Central by-election and the party’s support or not of his efforts given that they still favoured the eventual election of Mary Lou McDonald come the general election.

Sinn Fein made a major mistake in 2004 in overselling the level of service that part time cllrs could be reasonable expected to deliver - for all the talk that there is of what cllr are paid, it is not a full time position (it was never designed to be as part of our democrat institutions). There is a considerable disconnect between the life of the SF activist in the north who see nothing wrong with committing yourself full-time for a roughly minimum wage return. If you were prepared to spend time in prison away from your family and friends as some were, then living on the minimum wage serving your community appears to be little enough of a sacrifice. Yet in the south that mindset doesn’t exist in large part because the south has not been shaped in the same way as the north by the situation there. Here a person embarking on political involvement not unreasonably expects they will still be able to hold down a proper job in order to be able to provide for a family and to spend time with them. Their expectations would be that a few evenings per week they will have meetings or canvassing, occasionally out during the daytime, and then responding to constituencies queries within a reasonable period, not to provide people with a free advice service 24/7 and be out every evening in all weathers.

That in part is why there have been so many resignations as public reps within SF, too many found that the level of work expected from them by the higher ups in the party (who are mostly northern and mostly full-time) was not compatible with actually being ordinary members of the southern electorate that they were tasked with representing. And this burnout hurt the party in 2009.

But that isn’t the driver behind Killian Forde’s departure, in his case it appears that the problem was different but similar systemic. The way in which SF goes about the business of it’s politics is what caused him to leave, in essence SF operates more like FF with almost all the decision making power in all areas being exercised by a few at the top and with little room for input from those who were not in favour with the leadership. In other words, it’s political nepotism. So wrapped up in the long term and personality driven nature of the republican peace process project the party appears unable to separate a criticism from the individual making the criticism, or the policy being criticised from the person who has advocated it. And that has hampered the party as it tries to come to terms with the fact that the peace process is for many people eaten bread and that other more mundane struggles still exist, like getting a job and making sure that your child can access a good education or health care.

This isn’t a problem unique to SF of course, though it appears more marked at this stage within that organisation. I’ve had my own views for some time on the lack of opportunities for people who are not public reps to have a formal input into the development and review of party policy and I’ve repeated those views to any within my party who will listen. I’m not blind to the real challenges involved in convincing the public of ideas nor to the limitations that there must of necessity be given that it is the elected representatives that must be able to make the case for the advancement of a particular policy platform. After all, it would be completely wrong to compel public reps to argue for policies they do not believe in or have a hand in shaping. But I would hold that we should have a better balance towards involving the members of political parties in decisions about the direction of the parties they are members of and which they do so much to sustain.

I don’t believe nor do I claim that we in Fine Gael have the balance quite right in that regard, but it would seem that SF have the balance completely wrong in the other direction with people, who are not answerable or accountable to the electorate and thus not as in touch with ordinary people, in positions of being in charge of policy formulation and more importantly in the decision making to adopt specific policies. They are like the movie moguls of old, hidden from the view of the paying public but always active behind the scenes shaping what parts the actors get and deciding who will work in this town again. Politics should be the most open and transparent of fields, with people rising and falling by success of the decisions they make and the ideas they create. To belabour the movie comparison still further we need fewer moguls and more auteurs. We need individuals who will present their own original ideas that can be shaped and revised by debate and implementation and who will be rewarded with more opportunities if those ideas deliver for the public. And we need fewer people who merely act as the messengers presenting the ideas of others, disowning responsibility for those ideas that are found wanting, but embracing after the fact those that succeed.

I wouldn’t make the presumption of describing Killian Forde as a friend, though I’ve always found him courteous we’d have significant differences of opinion about the political direction of the country. That is likely to continue to be the case but I’ve found him to be someone that it’s possible to debate political points with because he was interested in the content of politics, unlike some in Irish politics he is able to listen to the arguments put forward by others. This is done, I believe, with a view that I share that only by genuinely listening to others that you can properly find the flaws in their arguments. I wish him well in his future within the Labour party and look forward to having the opportunity at some point of again testing my ideas against his ideas. Because politics is primarily about ideas, not personalities.

Local Elections Predictions - 2009

// May 29th, 2009 // No Comments » // Fianna Fail, fine gael, green party, labour

I think that the share of the national vote will be as follows

FF will get 25%

FF will get 33%,

Greens 3%

Labour15%

SF 8%

Independents 15

I think that FF will stay just over the 250 seat mark. FG will gain about 20 plus seats, Labour would gain 30 plus,  SF will gain a half a dozen seats nationally but could lose a few high profile gains from last time in particular in Dublin where there has been so much churn in the candidates from 2004. Greens will drop under 10 seats. Independents to have a good day but some high profile people will lose out. I expect Michael ‘the stroke’ Fahy to lose and indeed at least one of the Healy Raes could lose out.