Hot Press interviews Martin Mansergh of Fianna Fáil June 18, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Culture, Irish Politics.2 comments
Today’s issue of Hot Press has a revealing interview by Jason O’Toole with Martin Mansergh. I’ve mentioned before how at one point I was quite impressed by the good Junior Minister (at the Department of Finance no less), but things changed… anyhow… what’s in the interview? Well, here are some choice cuts, as the saying has it…
Wasn’t it a strategically bad idea to bring in the 1% levy only days before an election? Surely that lost Fianna Fail votes?
The government has taken the view for some time now that you might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb! The situation is simply too pressing to be taking a lot of short-term considerations into account. You hear people saying at party meetings, ‘Why didn’t you leave the announcement about the Christmas bonus until July?’ The answer to that – and I would have quite a strong view on this – is you should not hold up bad news, as there’s few more certain ways of destroying trust. We do deserve some credit – even if we’re punished for it – for doing to the best of our ability what needs to be done in what is a fairly horrendous economic situation, which almost nobody really foresaw.
But wasn’t the scrapping of the Christmas bonus for the unemployed just mean?
You’ve got a large and growing social welfare budget. The alternative was to cut rates. If the choice was between cutting rates and cutting the Christmas bonus, then it was probably better to do the latter. I would naturally much prefer that it wouldn’t be necessary to do it. The Christmas bonus was cut for two or three years in the 1980s. Certainly, I would see it as something that would be restored in the future.
Okay… continue… here’s an interesting admission…
But the shenanigans we’re only learning about now – particularly in the banking sector – happened during Bertie’s watch. Surely some of the blame falls on his shoulders?
Yes, of course, in hindsight it wasn’t rigorous enough. Mind you, any sort of rigour in those times would have been highly unpopular. That is a criticism that can be made. I’ll just make the point: with the benefit of hindsight some people might say – and correctly – that we were not rigorous enough in dampening down the construction boom, even to some extent. But I don’t accept the idea that the government were the only players in that. Look at all those property supplements. We are being criticised by newspapers which are now in many incidences in considerable financial difficulties because they are no longer getting the income from the heightening of property that took place. The guide prices were very often way off the mark and, so I am told, the results of the prices were quite often manipulated. The print media played a very big part in the unsustainable property boom.
Never! Conor and Donagh at Dublin Opinion have argued this for years now, but isn’t it telling to hear it from a Government Minister.
Coming from an Anglo-Irish background, did you ever feel discriminated against in Irish politics?
Yes, of course, I’ve had my share of sticks and stones. Yes, people can sometimes make derogatory remarks about one’s background. But look at Bertie – was he ever discriminated against because of his background and accent? Perhaps yes. If you look at everybody’s situation, your political opponents will make the maximum of your weak points and vulnerabilities. And you try to make the most of your positives. Of course, there may have been whispers on the campaign trail about being an absentee English landlord or something! Incidentally, you can’t be a member of the Oireachtas without being an Irish citizen. I remember once going into Charlie Haughey and there was a serious calumny circulating about me and I mentioned it to him. He just looked at me and smiled and said, ‘Join the club!’
Indeed…
Some useful insight into the political analysis of the Government…and him too…
You played a significant role in the Peace Process. Is it true that there was some surprise amongst Unionists at your arrival as part of Fianna Fail’s delegation?
I think they may have been. You see, people who don’t fit into stereotypes can make life more (pauses)… I have to say that my bigger role in the Peace Process would have been in the dialogue with Republicans, rather than the dialogue with the Unionists. People have – not just Unionists but also quite a few journalists in this city – stereotyped views about where politically one might ought to be. In other words, they deduce your politics from your background. Just to come back to Unionism – I had a great, great uncle who was a Colonel Mansergh, from Cork, who served in the British Army. He retired to Warrenpoint where he became secretary of the Ulster Unionists Association back in the early years of the 20th Century. He’d get up on platforms and say Home Rule would be disastrous for Ireland. For which my comment is: we’ll never really know (laughs) because we never had Home Rule. The one place that did have it – Northern Ireland – was, certainly in its first 50 years, undoubtedly a bit of a disaster (laughs).
And, naturally, quite a bit on the Peace Process.
What are your thoughts on [the] role [of Gerry Adams]?
Obviously, to bring the provisional movement with him intact was a very difficult and tricky exercise involving a lot of diplomacy. Unfortunately, diplomats – and I was once a diplomat myself – do tend, when talking to different groups, to emphasise the aspects of things which will appeal to whoever you’re talking to. His criticism of De Valera in the 1920s would be: ‘Yes, we went into constitutional politics, but he didn’t bring all of the IRA with him’. Probably, it’s fair to say that – despite their best efforts – Adams and McGuinness haven’t brought all of the IRA with them. They brought the mainstream Provisional IRA but there are splinter groups out there trying to, if you like, challenge that. Maybe that was a virtually impossible task. But I’m strongly of the view – notwithstanding all of the frustrations felt with long drawn up negotiations – that Ireland is very fortunate in the leadership it had of what, as they call themselves, the Republican Movement. If you look around the world – Sri Lanka, the Palestinian situation, the Basque country – there are very few leaderships of the calibre of Adams and McGuinness.
As ever there’s more and it’s actually a very entertaining piece. I think I like him a little better perhaps after reading this.
Talk this evening at the National Library June 18, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.1 comment so far
Check it out here… looks very interesting.
Racism in Belfast June 17, 2009
Posted by Garibaldy in Northern Ireland, racism.94 comments
I have this post up at my own blog, but seeing the amount of publicity the situation has been getting, and the importance of the issue, I thought I’d stick it up here too.
Shocking news that over 100 Romanians have fled their homes after a series of racist attacks in the Lisburn Road area over the past week. There have been a lot of racist attacks in Belfast over the last number of years, leading to it being labelled as Europe’s capital for racist attacks. Most of these attacks have taken place in south Belfast, where most of the immigrants live. This area is near Queen’s University, and most of the previous attacks were in the loyalist village area. The recent attacks were not in the Village, but the attackers seem to have come from there.
While there has been some Combat 18 graffiti in the past, the recent attacks seem to have gone beyond previous ones in the extent to which they were openly Neo-Nazi. The BBC reported that the attackers shouted Combat 18 slogans, and pushed a letter containing text from Mein Kampf through the letterbox. There was also an attack made on a protest rally on the Lisburn Road, although this may or may not have been the same gang. The BBC report linked immediately above suggests that the attackers were heckled by the demonstrators before the attack.
It’s good to see the community stand against the attacks. What is less pleasing is the police response, and the response of unionist politicians, who have been largely silent. The police have said there is no evidence that the attacks were orchestrated. Now, the police may may right; or they may be downplaying the situation to try and keep tensions down. But the idea these attacks were unconnected does seem to stretch credibility a little too much.
Given the fact that the BNP’s call centre is based in Belfast, and that there have been repeated attempts to organise here, it is possible that the recent European elections emboldened the people behind these attacks, although I suspect it is nothing that sophisticated. Whatever the situation, the politicians, police, and community must act to isolate and convict the people responsible. And gaol them for this hate crime.
UPDATE: Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness and junior Minister Jeffrey Donaldson have visited the familes, a welcome development. There has also been condemnation from unionist politicians and others. Details here and here.
UPDATE 2: The ICTU has released a statement calling for a structured response from politicians, community leaders and statuatory bodies, as well as the allocation to police of resources to deal with the problem.
UPDATE 3: Splintered Sunrise has some thoughts picking up important points I missed, and an issue raised the comments here, namely geography.
Checks and truth. The most generous welfare payments in Europe… reprise… June 17, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Economy, Irish Politics.16 comments
You’ve got to hand it to Sarah Carey.
For she has decided to deal with her comments earlier this year where she asserted that Ireland had the most generous social welfare payments in Europe, a point she made at the time in order to demonstrate that the state spending was extravagant and – presumably – unnecessary.
But let me allow her to make her own case(s)…
BACK IN March, I wrote a column about taxation. I argued that the overwhelming political consensus that resulted in exchequer overdependence on indirect taxation over direct taxation was unjust and insane. Unjust because indirect taxation is regressive and insane because its revenues collapse at the first sign of trouble.
In it, I mentioned that Ireland has the most generous social welfare payments in Europe. This isn’t true at all and I most humbly apologise for leading Irish Times readers into error. Apart from that I’m rather pleased I made the mistake because it has opened up a rather interesting hornet’s nest.
She doesn’t really tell us much about the hornet’s nest, which is a pity. I’d certainly like to hear more.
So how did this ‘error’ happen? Let us further appraise her mea culpa.
In researching the article, I’d asked the Department of Finance to provide me with statistics on the distribution of taxation payments. Their briefing document consisted mostly of hard numbers with some political arguments thrown in.
One bullet point read: “Although it may be of little comfort for those living on social welfare, Irish social welfare rates are among the highest in the EU.”
Go on…
I read, internalised, mangled and then regurgitated the line a few days later. By omitting “among” I made a grievous error. My bad, as they say. However, it has been drawn to my attention that not only was I incorrect to say that our payments are the most generous, but they are not even “among” the most generous.
If that’s true, not only was I wrong, but the department is wrong too.
Perish the thought. A government department being wrong…
There’s something odd about this, though. And that’s because it’s not quite the explanation she gave to Donagh on the Irish Left Review some while back.
There she initially argued that the information she received from the Department was ‘clear’ and that it stated that they were the ‘most’ generous. It was only in a subsequent communication that she admitted that ‘perhaps’ she had ‘used one misplaced word’…
I look forward to Donagh’s take on all this.
But for she now seeks safety in numbers… it’s not just our Johnny (or Sarah) who was out of step with the rest of the marching soldiers… oh no, this was contagious. They were all moving in the wrong directions…
Before and since I wrote that column, variations on the phrase have appeared with increasing regularity from other commentators and politicians. Either everyone has managed to come to the same conclusion because the statement is true or because we’ve all been soundly spun. If it’s the latter, then the boys in the department’s press office are very good at disseminating possibly incorrect information.
Yes. I like the ‘possibly’…
Still, what of this?
In making the claim, the department is implicitly suggesting that since social welfare rates are extremely generous, then having them cut will be no great loss. Those on the self-proclaimed left hotly dispute the accuracy of the statement. Membership of the right is never proclaimed – it’s an accusation rather than a boast. The left says that we are way down the EU tables and are actually quite parsimonious with our payments. Their implicit argument is that the payments should be preserved at their current rate, irrespective of how close we get to national bankruptcy.
Well disregarding her, as we’ve previously noted, idiosyncratic understanding of political categories it’s entertaining to see her in the first sentence attribute to the Department something that was actually a characteristic of her own use of the information in the original piece. And it’s also interesting to see that at no point does she reference examples of this ‘spinning’ that she potentially ascribes to the Department (again, perish the thought that perhaps the notion that we have ‘generous’ social welfare rates was a pre-existing myth circulating amongst the great and the good in our society and commentariat).
The woes of the newspaper columnist are many and this forces her to grapple with the issue…
So, is the statement “amongst the highest in the EU” true or not? Enter the two-handed economist. On the one hand, when tables showing lists of payments in the EU15 are examined, we are near the bottom for some payments such as unemployment benefit and midway or above average for others. On the other hand, the tables themselves are almost impossible to compile fairly and what’s “EU” anyway? The 15 or the 27? It’s extremely difficult to measure the true benefit of a payment when wage levels, costs of living, quality of public services and the point of my original column – amount of tax paid – are taken into account. How do you compare free travel, free TV licence, subsidised telephone bills and the pension for OAPs in Ireland with pension payments in Germany? It’s almost impossible.
Actually, it’s not. It’s not at all impossible, although it is a bit time consuming.
Sure, there may be some variations and variability – local factors may skew things a bit – but somehow when representing economic statistics across a range of states commentators and institutions from the OECD down manage to do it – otherwise how does she explain the fact that we are so readily able to have a world engaged in globalisation, international finance, or indeed the operation of the EU which remarkably appears to function with 27, count ‘em 27, different members, so I think it’s reasonable to argue that we (and she) can attempt to make some reasonable comparisons. We can also, as a rule of thumb argue that,; for example even if payments were higher in this state say than the UK, the broader provision of services there on the health/etc side would vastly outweigh those available here. And perhaps inevitably even she is pushed towards this conclusion…
Forced to make a call, I’d say the department’s interpretation of the facts is what might be generously described as “loose” and they should stop making the claim unless they can convincingly back it up.
Yeah. Well there’s a surprise.
Anyone else who makes the same claim because they read it somewhere – say, in a column in The Irish Times – should stop making it too.
But…
However, I’d go one further. The department should stop making the claim not just because it’s wrong, but because it’s irrelevant. The French, the Swedes, the Germans and the Italians aren’t paying our bills – yet. We have to raise sufficient money through taxation or borrowing for what we believe is essential spending. It’s up to us to define “essential”.
Even if we had the highest payments in Europe, that is no argument to cut them and if we had the lowest, it’s no reason to raise them. Other countries have different political cultures, taxation systems and levels of public services. They also have different balance sheets. There are only two factors relevant to what Ireland should pay its citizens in social welfare – what we can afford and what we think is the amount necessary to cover a person’s basic costs.
…
Both of these are entirely subjective and a matter of political economy rather than mere economics. Should a minimum family income cover the cost of a Sky subscription, the mortgage on the family home or meat just once a week? Working out what we can and can’t afford is a debate taking place in every home and in every government department and the price of bananas in Belgium is neither here nor there.
Last year, we could afford the early childcare supplement – this year we can’t. Apparently, we can’t afford special needs assistants, but we can afford to recapitalise Anglo Irish. One person’s injustice is another’s pragmatism. The winner of the argument is quite simply the one who happens to be in power. Right now, that power lies in Merrion Street. As harsh as the current regime might seem, the imperative is to prevent that power shifting to Frankfurt or Washington DC. That has to be our focus now and yearning for some other country’s welfare system is a waste of time.
With one thrust the Gordian knot is cut. She may have been ‘mistaken’.. but it doesn’t matter! Because we can only ‘afford’ what we can ‘afford’.
But while I agree in part with that point, it being self-evident, I’m less impressed by its use as a conceptual scorched earth policy wherein being wrong and disseminating incorrect information is but a trifle… Because, she only mentioned the idea in the first place in the context of the following statement:
Of course, there are few specifics. I have no idea what “middle-income” means. Most Irish people claim to be middle class, so presumably they labour under the illusion of earning “middle incomes” too.
I do know that almost 40 per cent of the 2.4 million income earners in the State are entirely exempt from income tax and that every party thinks this number should be increased.
When asked who should pay tax so that there’s enough money to fund the most generous social welfare payments in the EU, we are back to – you’ve guessed it – the tax exiles. Of course, that’s hardly surprising. Tax exiles don’t vote and the 900,000 exempted earners do.
Mmm… as a leftist I think that’s a parody of the viewpoint I hold whereby I believe services and welfare should be funded by all from general taxation including income taxes and including increased taxation for all. Not because I like increased taxation but because I tend to follow the old dictum that there’s no such thing as a free lunch and that we can’t get what we don’t spend. Sadly I’ve lived in a polity where for the last fifteen or so years the opposite has been the credo of the political classes high on growth and convinced that lower taxation was the only way to go. But this isn’t about me…
None of this is in a self-contained bubble either. She may not believe in multiplier effects, or indeed in the fiscal stimulus effects that operate for the unemployed or those on low incomes, but other states and economies clearly do. Big states. Although if we take her line there’s no point in making comparisons.
Still, away from her new-found Year Zero approach to inconvenient facts, in all other matters we do take cognisance of comparatives between states, and more particularly between our nearest partners in Europe. And so indeed does the government and business in relation to wage levels, standards of living and so forth. It’s basic stuff, it’s entirely necessary. We need yardsticks, we need standards, we need goals. It is central to any analysis both of our own structures and possible alternatives. And the idea that we can simply ignore or resile from these is an absurdity – not least because we still remain in global, and arguably in European terms, a rather wealthy country.
While you’re thinking about that, think about this, from the president of the Irish Taxation Institute comes an interesting snippet…
Another surprising finding of the survey relates to public perception of the burden of income tax in Ireland. In 2006, the last time the Irish Taxation Institute National Tax Survey was conducted, 53 per cent of respondents felt the personal tax burden in Ireland was high compared with the rest of Europe.
That figure has dropped to 50 per cent in the 2009 survey, even though we’ve seen significant increases in taxation in the two emergency budgets in October 2008 and April 2009.
In fact, the reality is quite different. Some 18 per cent of respondents to our 2009 poll correctly hold the view that our income tax burden is typically lower than the rest of Europe (again, surprisingly, an increase from the 11 per cent result in 2006). Prior to October 2008, the personal tax burden in Ireland was quite low in terms of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation Development (OECD) average.
While the tax burden has increased in the wake of the recent changes, the tax burden in Ireland is still below the OECD average. In fact, despite recent budget tax hikes, Ireland – along with New Zealand, Korea and Mexico – has one of the lowest tax burdens in the industrialised world, according to figures from the OECD.
That’s another inconvenient truth which we hear little of.
But Carey’s point is one which clearly positions the idea of the ‘most generous’ social welfare payments as yet another unreasonable expense pushed onto the ‘hard-working middle-income’ earners.
And that’s a specifically political argument she seeks to make, and while sure, as I’ve noted affordability enters into the equation so too does the structure of our economy, the nature of that society and the amount we are willing to see taken in taxation (in all its myriad forms) to provide services/welfare. She I suspect holds a different view from me as to where the dial should be set on those matters. That’s fine, it’s a perfectly legitimate viewpoint, but in all her columns she seems strangely hesitant to simply come out and say it, that she doesn’t want a more Central and Northern European model to be followed with higher personal taxation and more public services/welfare and that instead she prefers a low tax lower provision model. Indeed look back at the column which initiated all this and you’ll see that she was keen to charge almost everyone – as far as I can see – with some degree of guilt. That’s an intriguing approach and allied with the aforementioned hesitancy perhaps worth of consideration another day.
Incidentally, entertaining at this remove, to read the opening paragraph of her original article…
“SURE THEY’RE all the same,” goes the bitter refrain. The funny thing is, I’ve checked and it’s true. A comparison of each party’s 2007 manifestos reveals remarkably similar policies, especially on taxation – the bedrock of the economy. Sinn Féin’s are the best written and the Green Party’s have some peculiar extras, but by and large they are the same.
Wrong. How not to deal with the Iranian situation. June 17, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in International Politics, US Politics.7 comments
It would be hard to find a more muddle-headed analysis of the Iran situation than that offered by Fred Kaplan in Slate at the moment.
It’s a piece which while cosmetically eschewing the excesses of the Bush era manages to replicate the underlying dynamics almost in full.
Given the near-certainty that Iran’s election was fixed and the documented fact that protesters are being brutalized, there is no way that Obama or Secretary of State Hillary Clinton could go to Tehran and shake hands with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, much less to expect that any talks would be worthwhile.
The issue here is not one of realpolitik vs. democratic idealism. Rather, it’s a question about what course of action is simply realistic (in the conversational, as opposed to ideological, sense of the word).
A classic international realist, in the tradition of Henry Kissinger, might shrug off the call for a revision in outlook and policy. After all, it’s nothing new or unusual for the United States, or any other power, to cultivate diplomatic relations with illegitimate regimes. If there hadn’t been an election, Obama would have proceeded to open a dialogue. And the nature of the Iranian government, which isn’t really run by the president, anyway, is basically the same now as it was last week.
Which begs the question why the election should change things one way or another, given his ‘given the fact…’ sentence which opens the piece. Why shouldn’t Clinton go to Tehran. Ahmadinejad’s hand is hardly any different today than last week. Kaplan argues that we’re seeing a mobilisation due to electoral fraud, but that that mobilisation is more than likely to fade away. Yet…
…reports have circulated in recent months suggesting that some Iranian clerics, even a few in high places, are displeased with Ahmadinejad’s harsh rhetoric and his mishandling of the economy. Some evidence of electoral fraud has reportedly been leaked from dissidents from within Iran’s interior ministry. The supreme leader has ordered the Guardian Council to investigate allegations of fraud—this after publicly ratifying the election’s results (without, suspiciously, observing the three-day waiting period that Iranian law requires)—though it may be that this order is mere subterfuge and that the investigation will be just as fraudulent.
In other words, it is possible (how likely it might be, no one can say) that the popular revolts might be sharpen the fissures within the circles of Iran’s ruling elite. Of course, those circles are so opaque that few outsiders can tell whether there are fissures, much less what their boundaries are. Does the CIA or the National Security Agency know? I hope so, but I don’t know.
And from this he concludes that:
Whatever is going on inside Tehran’s ruling circles, now is not the time for Obama to engage in outreach. Rather, it’s time to up the ante, to make the mullahs—especially those who might be inclined to cast off Ahmadinejad—realize that if they’re going to play democracy, they can’t rig the deck and violate the will of their people, at least not so blatantly.
Okay. But what mechanisms are in place to do so?
Some “smart sanctions” against Iran have had a modicum of success in the past: freezing financial transactions and foreign bank accounts; severely cutting back on capital investment; and banning the export of oil-refining equipment, which the Iranians painfully need. The Europeans have been reluctant, out of economic self-interest, to go along with these steps in the past. Perhaps moral shaming, to which they’re sometimes more vulnerable than we are, can be piled on.
Lovely to hear that ‘moral shaming’ is the lever to dislodge European opinion. And this from a man with an aversion to ‘classic realism’? But note the minimalist nature of the mechanisms he proposes. It’s a fairly well known fact that Iran has a dismally high rate of military aviation accidents due to their inability to get spare parts for their aircraft. Does he really think that a state enduring that sort of problem is really open to fracture due to ‘sanctions’ that he admits have only had a modicum of success?
Then he switches gear.
The problem with former President George W. Bush’s policy of “democracy promotion” was threefold. First, it was hypocritical: He supported dissidents in certain countries and dictatorships in others. Second, it sought, at least rhetorically, to impose Western-style democracy without regard to a country’s political terrain. Third, in places where a civil society had not yet developed, elections could exacerbate violence and harm U.S. interests. (Case in point: the Palestinian territories.)
Note too how, despite his seeming openness to the notion of specific political characteristics of a country, that the Palestinians are, as ever, sui generis. The trifle that they’ve had a rather hostile socioeconomic and political context within which to develop civil society – or even that civil society takes many forms, some not as readily identifiable as he appears to propose – is seemingly irrelevant to his thesis. The corollary that there might be ways and means to amend the broader situation, as for example demonstrating a will to impose pressure to prevent settlement activity and so on, which would feed directly into the nature of electoral contests without necessitating their delay or curtailment, is ignored. His default position, at least in this piece, is apparently one where the US can and presumably should take a detached role.
Except, it’s not, as the next paragraph or two reveals.
The situation with Iran is different. The movement for change is arising from within. What sort of politics the protesters advocate isn’t clear. And the protesters seem to be more aligned with Western interests: Journalists who have traveled in Iran and talked with reformers say that they’re among the most pro-American people they’ve ever met.
This is not to say that we should send in spies or special-ops troops to provide covert aid to the protesters or their favored candidate, Mir Hossein Mousavi. The discovery of American fingerprints would spur a backlash, raising memories of the CIA-backed coup of 1953. Nonetheless, it wouldn’t be a bad idea for someone with a knack for subtlety to probe the fissures for possibilities of new leaders rising to power.
Knowing Iranians, at least somewhat, I can’t imagine a worse approach by the United States. The very sniff of any action or intervention by that nation will cripple whatever good can come of this situation whether that is a slight loosening of the constraints or a much more broad based process of reform. This is, very largely, something that will be played out within Iran. Which is not to say – and I’ve noticed elsewhere people arguing that leftists shouldn’t take sides, well fair enough, but I see no reason not to have an opinion as to which configuration of forces is preferable in a given situation – that nothing should be done. International pressures through the United Nations and other transnational bodies appears to me to be the only way forward. That and, perhaps, some level of technical assistance to those inside to ensure that the message gets out.
But Kaplan continues further in a vein which I think is illuminating…
Meanwhile, according to NPR’s Deborah Amos, U.S. officials visiting Damascus in the past few days—in the wake of Lebanon’s more satisfying election—have emerged with happy faces from meetings with their Syrian counterparts. The details aren’t yet clear, but this might be an opportune moment to start luring Syria away from its Iranian alliance. Without its Syrian middlemen, Iran would have a much harder time influencing events in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories.
Obama has backed the idea of diplomacy with Iran because Iran is too powerful in the region to ignore. Ahmadinejad said, after he was officially declared the winner, that his victory was the harbinger of a further hardening of foreign policy. So if diplomacy is likely to be futile as well as unseemly, an alternative course might be to take steps to make Iran less powerful, its rulers less comfortable. Hold out the prospect of normal relations if a new election, or at least a real vote count, is held. But in the meantime, tighten the screws.
Which screws? And look back at the line about ‘influencing events in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories’. It has to be said that in the former the situation has certainly become rosier from a western perspective and secondly there is an agency gifted to Palestinians above and beyond Iranian intervention. It’s simply incredible to propose that were the Iranians removed from the field of play then all would somehow be ‘right’ there, whatever ones definition of ‘right’ may be.
But beyond all this I think it’s important to note that Iran is undergoing an entirely predictable, albeit more emphatic response than might have been expected, to the slow and not at all stealthy consolidation of power by the regime which impacts directly with deep societal trends. The illiberalisation process has been a feature of the past decade or so as dissent has been further stifled and societal freedoms curtailed. And yet as is now evident that process can only go so far without meeting a response. That is something the regime must now factor in in its future approaches to the society.
There are so many contradictions about Iranian society and its polity, although perhaps it would be more accurate to say that there we see a more accentuated version of the problems which face many many states globally – and some that have always struck me as curiously similar to our own development as a state. The centrality of a form of Republicanism, that of Islam as a cornerstone of both the Revolution and the societal identity, that of democracy as a legitimising aspect of the state, that of class as an often and largely unspoken issue. And that these have come into conflict and that each has adherents to softer and harder interpretations and that sometimes those who one might imagine would take one line are allied with those who might appear to be their philosophical, ideological and even in a factional sense religious rivals.
There’s another basic problem, the election while thrown may not have been quite as thrown as some surmise. The evidence of a poll taken less than a month ago indicates that as recently as late May Ahmadinejad had considerable support. Now, as it happens I’d bet that that support diminished, and as I’ve noted previously it looks like to me as if the regime was concerned by how much it had diminished, although perhaps he did gain a majority of votes cast for candidates. How else to explain their particularly inept handling of the crisis subsequently, or the suspicious rapidity with which they sought to despatch the election?
Which means that Kaplan’s contention is, arguably, flawed from the start. But Kaplan doesn’t really care about the election, not least since the wrong guy won and the process was intrinsically corrupt. He may have something there, but it’s difficult to take seriously the subsequent hand wringing over the result of the election. If Kaplan thinks further sanctions should be imposed, and one could enquire as to how the previous set have gone, then he should come right out and say so irregardless of the
I’m no fan of the regime. It’s brutal, it destroyed the left, it’s partial, riven by factions, attempting with clear ineptitude to stifle very basic human impulse to expression and particularly harsh on women and the young. It will, sooner or later, modify. But simultaneously there remains a curious blend of freedom and repression. The clerical elite is itself divided between moderates and conservatives and so on and so forth. It is a society seeking to come to terms with itself. There isn’t an easy way through that. Maybe there’s no way at all in the short term.
HANDS OFF THE PEOPLE OF IRAN PROTEST… June 16, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.2 comments
When Conservatives Attack (each other)! Libertas… redux infinity… June 16, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in European Politics, Irish Politics.23 comments
Mark Coughlan over on Irish Election pointed to a dynamic in the Libertas campaign, one we might charitably call chaotic. Ah, the bright and beautiful! The greatest minds of our generation. The titans of media, old and new. Sort of. Kind of. Not. And he also noted a fantastic snippet which I had missed concerning a fire in the Libertas office. You could not make it up. Nor you might suppose could that be topped.
You would be wrong in both cases. For news today that internecine warfare has broken out within the defeated Libertas camp.
UNSUCCESSFUL LIBERTAS candidate for Dublin Caroline Simons sent a legal letter to Declan Ganley’s spokesman the day after the European elections accusing the spokesman of defaming her.
Ms Simons’s complaint related to a press release issued to the media in her name describing an international Jewish organisation, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, as “beneath contempt”.
It continues:
The release was prompted by the Simon Wiesenthal Centre’s claim that some Libertas candidates around Europe were “known anti-Semites, homophobes and anti-migrant racists”.
Ms Simons’s letter to John McGuirk, seen by The Irish Times , was dated June 6th.
This was after Mr Ganley had announced Libertas would “ally itself” with the Wiesenthal Centre to fight anti-Semitism in the European Parliament and Libertas had issued a retraction of the original statement in Ms Simons’s name.
And to the heart of the matter…
On June 1st, a statement from the Wiesenthal centre claimed “extremist” parties and individuals were “reportedly affiliated to the Libertas bloc, founded in 2006 by the Irish-based magnate, Declan Ganley, in order to combat the Lisbon Treaty on European integration”.
Referring to Libertas candidates across Europe, the Wiesenthal centre said: “Some of those standing are known anti-Semites, homophobes and anti-migrant racists.”
A responding statement issued by Libertas in Ms Simons’s name described the Wiesenthal centre as “beneath contempt”.
The statement said it had been only a matter of time before “the establishment got so desperate” that it resorted to calling Libertas Nazis. “The only surprise here is that we had to wait so long before they could find a willing idiot to come and say it.” The statement was dated June 2nd but released on the 3rd.
And what of this?
Later the same day, Mr Ganley announced that Libertas would “ally itself” with the centre “in a joint commitment to defend against, and actively fight, racism and anti-Semitism within the European Parliament and other European Institutions”.
Libertas’s press office said it later issued another statement saying the earlier release attributed to Ms Simons had been issued in error and had not been approved. Ms Simons told The Irish Times that “a number” of press releases were issued in her name without her knowledge during the recent campaign.
She said she sent an e-mail to media outlets on June 3rd, signed by Mr Ganley and herself, saying: “A statement was released earlier today by a member of the Irish Libertas staff which contained untruths.” Ms Simons said she sent an e-mail to the RTÉ newsdesk on June 6th, saying: “The release made by a Libertas staff member was made without Ms Simons’ knowledge or authority and comments ascribed to her were never said and are untrue.”
The response from the Libertas spokesman?
Mr McGuirk said yesterday: “I’m very disappointed that a candidate who didn’t perform particularly well in the election would choose to embarrass herself like this.”
Hmmm… think he might have got the wrong end of the stick there.
Oh wait, there’s more!
Straws in the wind? June 16, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Irish Politics.15 comments
Thanks to Leveller for sending me the following…
LABOUR/ SINN FÉIN DÁIL MOTION SEEKS URGENT ACTION ON JOBS CRISIS
Time for Left Alliance at Dublin City Council
Or is the former the outworking of the 2007 agreement between Sinn Féin and Labour?
The smile on the face of the Dempsey…and it’s still the economy, stupid. June 16, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Economy, Irish Politics.1 comment so far
It’s great stuff in the papers from our not entirely beloved “cut Dublin Bus services” Minister of Transport Noel Dempsey. Dempsey has kind words for the Green Party… and no small degree of chutzpah… as when he says:
“I am a former environment minister, I had five years in environment. I think my record would have been good in that, and I think it is good to have a couple of [Green Party] colleagues in Government as well. I think that is very helpful.”
Yes, no doubt it is. There’s something, though, just a tad dismissive about the ‘couple of’… And what of his thought that…
“I think the Greens would be doing themselves a disfavour if they didn’t accept that they have got a huge amount of their agenda – if they talked down the amount of their policies that are being implemented at the moment.”
Now, I’ve been more supportive of the Green Party than most, but I have to say that two years in the validity of his contention seems a bit… well… threadbare. It’s not that they haven’t achieved anything. It’s that the achievements have been far too narrowly focused and entirely lacking a sense of a coherent ideological approach. The defence is, naturally, that with two Ministers and a junior Minister what more could be expected? But the problem is that unlike the Progressive Democrats before them, there has been no sense that their ideological and/or philosophical approach has translated into a clear stamp on the character of this government. And I could summarise it as high-achieving in a narrow field is near useless in generating a political narrative. It gets worse when one considers that beyond those fields such egregious measures as the cervical cancer vaccine cuts (overseen by a Minister whose party had effectively ceased to exist) make a mockery of any sense of a broader ‘influence’ that the GP can bring to bear. And, as with the buses, these are issues which the Green Party – of all parties – should be leading on. Preventative health care, public transport, each an issue which was – at least hitherto – central to their identity.
Look, I don’t expect the GP to operate as a sort of social democratic mole at the heart of government. That’s not really in its character, particularly not in its current incarnation. It’s of the left, but not necessarily that leftist. But… even if it is just being true to its shiny new efficient and technocratic face with a green tinge it is these issues which have an emotive cachet that operates far beyond those who are affected directly by them that it as a party should be pursuing ruthlessly.
And that’s why Dempsey’s words, of all people, are so telling. Because there is an implicit tone in them which undermines even as it seeks to flatter.
He said the Greens “have made their views well known and very, very clear at this stage. They want to be in Government to deliver their policy, they are delivering their policy. We will review the Programme for Government. We will deliver that by 2012, and then I think we will be in a much better position to face the electorate at that stage.”
But he said the “the Programme for Government does need a review. We based it on a 4 per cent growth rate and we are probably minus 8 per cent this year.
“Money isn’t there for a lot of the projects that we thought we had money for, so it is timely to do that review and we will have a few ideas of our own as a party and we’ll work those out. However, former Green Party leader Trevor Sargent said the issues were not just about money, but how it was spent.
“People are maybe too narrowly focused,” he said. “The job of being in Government is about not just what money you spend but how you spend the money. We need to look at various ways we can spend money better, the small amount of money that we do have.”
And consider that he sets out the thinking in the larger party. That it wants to be, that it needs to be, in government for more or less the full term of this Dáil if there is a whisper that it can recover lost ground (as it happens, sceptical so and so that I am, I wouldn’t say that was near as hard a task for FF as it appears to be for British Labour).
But perhaps Dempsey is also responding to reports from the weekend which seemed to indicate the GP in fractious mood.
Ciarán Cuffe is quoted in the Business Post as upping the ante… sort of.
Cuffe said the Greens were ‘‘more interested in policy than power, and if we don’t see that policy coming forward, we’re happy to walk’’.
‘‘It’s worth staying in [government], but we need clear timeframes on policy issues,” said Cuffe. ‘‘We need to ramp up the policy delivery.”
You’ll note that the continued existence of the Coalition, as was underscored last week by the relevant Ministers, appears intact. Although as the article also points out…
A special convention of the party’s 1,900 members is then likely to be called for the autumn, when a vote will be held on whether to remain in government based on the revised programme agreed between party leader John Gormley and Taoiseach Brian Cowen.
What is interesting are the discontents picked upon by the GP… note the following:
Cuffe pointed to delays in the publication of the Civil Partnership Bill, which he said should have been finalised before the local elections. ‘‘This is symptomatic of the concerns we have to push through.”
…
Green Party senator Dan Boyle accused Fianna Fáil of ‘‘reacting’’ to economic circumstances. He said there was ‘‘a reluctance’’ by Fianna Fáil to introduce reform of the Dáil, the Seanad, the system of political contributions and the Freedom of Information Act. ‘‘We can’t stand over this,” he said.
I wonder if that is focussing on the wrong areas of government? Because, while in no sense dismissing the power of such issues as FOI and civil partnership, and it would be a start to see them progressed, the core concern for me and mine, and most likely you and yours, is the economy.
What news from Tehran, stranger? June 15, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in International Politics.3 comments
Always worth remembering what the Revolution did to the left in its aftermath. But… also worth noting the enduring stability of the regime in the years since. It’s a remarkable achievement, of sorts. I’ve known a number of Iranians over the years, including a few who regularly return to the country. And from discussions with them I’m a little dubious about some of the pat stuff we hear about the ‘middle class’, ‘rural/working class’ divide that the election this last week supposedly threw up.
Talk of grannies and uncles and aunts living in traditional and somewhat impoverished surroundings in the rural areas tends to make one suspect that just as here class lines within families let alone the broader society are nowhere near as clearly defined as some might propose. And that the idea of a cloistered Westernised elite middle class simply aching to join its compatriots in Paris and London and New York while not entirely incorrect isn’t entirely correct either (not least since travel is much less restrictive than some seem to suppose and many of those same elites already travel back and forth with a will). And even the notion that they’re absolutely steadfast in the aim of throwing off the Revolution and all its works seem wide of the mark. Because a profound Iranian nationalism seems to me to sit at the root of an identity that is central to their lives, whether in Dublin or Tehran or wherever. Added to that the example of the global hegemon’s last adventure being, as it were right on their doorstep, and being in many respects quite welcome in cementing their own rather impressive sphere of influence has led to – at least in my experience in talking to Iranians – a significant degree of cynicism as regards the soft words out of Washington.
And that said I’m always a little bit sceptical about media reporting from the West on this matter (which is not to say I’ve any grá for the regime, note my first sentence). I’d be fairly certain that Ahmadinejad is a more popular figure than has been painted. And let’s not get too dewy eyed over Mousavi who albeit presenting a more progressive face on some issues is as much a creature of the real elites that rule the nation as his rival.
But, to my mind the response over the past twenty-four hours from the regime seems to point to Ahmadinejad, if not losing the election, certainly not doing quite as well as he or they might have expected and a certain panic setting in. The longevity or depth of the ensuing protests also seems to point to something a little different from some of the ‘colour’ revolutions we’ve seen elsewhere. And the curiously unsurefooted response seems to point to some messing around somewhere. Confidence in all matters is the more usual response at such times.
Looking at the photographs this evening it’s hard not to come to the conclusion that if not now, then that society will face big changes in five, ten or fifteen years and the events we are witnessing are merely the prelude to them.
