February 27, 2003
Beware the ides of March
In the House of Commons, well over one hundred Labour MPs effectively voted
against their own government's support for the impending war on Iraq. The
debate was serious - participation in a war on Iraq means sending British troops
into harms way.
Closer to home, the Irish government are also facing a revolt on an important
moral question - the proposed abolishing of the dual mandate, which allows a TD
to also be a member of a local council. The reason is to encourage TDs to spend
more time being TDs, rather than spending most of their time in their
constituencies working on purely local issues. There is a revolt of sorts -
independent TDs, who depend on the dual mandate to consolidate a local power
base, claim it is anti-democratic. Surely the people can vote for who they like,
they argue. Indeed, and look at who they vote for.
Some of the independent TDs are from the Fianna Fail gene pool; i.e. FFers that
didn't get nominated at election time, so ran for election anyway as
independents. Bertie treats them like the Corleones treated Fredo.
Martin Cullen, the Minister in charge, is offering compensation - there is a
sneaking suspicion that the level of compo may be directly proportional to the
moral outrage generated.