Workers Solidarity Movement

Despite appalling weather conditions, members of the 1% Network gathered outside the Central Bank in Dublin’s Dame Street on Thursday evening (10^th March) to highlight the fact that, despite the change in government the wealthy 1% still “pull the strings”.

The evening’s events began with a symbolic sealing off of the Central Bank with crime scene tape.  This was done to highlight the fact that it is “a symbol of no-regulation capitalism and unbridled greed,” said Brian Leeson, 1% Network spokesperson. 

The election campaign and its aftermath have witnessed strident declarations that all has changed, changed utterly. Most prominent is the decimation of support for Fianna Fail, the party that has ruled 60 of the State’s 79 years of existence. Both Fine Gael and Labour have experienced remarkable success in the polls, unparallelled for the latter. These are not insignificant, but the context of continued economic crisis renders the changes in parliament relatively minor. Whatever government is formed, it will share the titanic debt burden of the previous administration. Although Fine Gael made suitably statesman-like noises about ‘renegotiation’ of the interest rate on the ECB bailout, their timid overtures won only tolerant obfuscation from Frankfurt during the campaign and categorical refusals since.

It has been revealed that the decade long resistance of the people of Erris to Shell's experimental gas pipeline has now wiped out Shell's projected profits from the project. Brian O’Cathain, the Managing Director of Enterprise Energy Ireland let the cat out of the bag at a debate at the IFI on the 4th December. Instead of the 650 million dollars the project was intended to cost, Shell & partners have now spent over 3 billion dollars.

As the first step to sorting out some sort of coalition deal Fine Gael & Labour in a co-ordinated move last night announced that they had discovered the financial situation was worse than expected.  This follows only days after the election and the subsequent vote by all but two of Labour's central council to enter into coalition talks with Fine Gael.  Clearly the scene is being set for not only Labour but also Fine Gael to abandon the promises they were elected for, only days after the supposed exercise in 'democracy' of Election 2011 and before a government has even been formed.  So much for Enda Kenny's proclamation of  "a democratic revolution at the ballot box", instead it's the usual Dail as parliament is meant to work, free from the interference of the masses. 

Members of Ireland’s wealthy elite have announced plans to meet outside the Central Bank in Dublin’s Dame Street on Thursday 10^th March at 6p.m. to celebrate the fact that it’s “business as usual now that the election is out of the way”.

Tragedy dressed as comedy, that’s what I am going to remember from this election.  It's funny to watch Fine Gael part with huge sums of money to some clever marketing interweb company under the title of 'social viral advertising' only to be presented with a game on their website where Enda Kenny runs around like a grinning ninja rat despatching opponents with the Fine Gael stars and the catch phrase ‘On your bike’, picking up token votes along the way. 

Today, in an even more meaningless exercise then normal, a minority of the population of Ireland will choose between two almost identical options as to who will implement the ECB / IMF austerity plans for southern Ireland. Outside of this plan the wealthiest 1% will continue to set economic policy tomorrow as they did yesterday and have throughout the last decades. The electoral circus we are now going through provides the rest of us with the illusion of control even though deep down almost everyone acknowledges the ritual as having no real impact on what policies are actually implemented.

Fintan O’Toole appears to want us to be listened to as citizens and believes that political reform is crucial. It is a natural reaction after witnessing the cronyism of Fianna Fáil in power over the last 13 years and how they’ve acted in favour of the ruling elite. The fact that I, as a taxpayer on €40,000 p.a., will pay exactly the same amount of tax as one on €300,000 p.a. puts that sharply into focus.

No political party would be allowed to take power on a platform of taking their riches from the wealthy 1%.  Their huge wealth gives them political power.  The power and wealth cannot be taken from the elite through the ballot box, it can only happen by a massive social upheaval.

An Irish general election fever grips this place, where promises flow like water running off a mountain, and where the sun, the moon, and the stars are laid at the feet of the people, all for the sake of a no. 1 on the day itself.   From looking around us now you witness the desperate scramble of prospective candidates to get into power, into the Dáil, to receive their €100,000 PA salary plus expenses.  Jobs and Reform appear to be on top of the agenda, yet no one appears to be responsible for the transgressions of the past.