While rebels shoot victory bullets at artwork in Gadafffi’s compound, an exhausted doctor in Libya’s state hospital stitches a man’s head back together.
In America, Dominique Strauss Kahn’s lawyer reminds the world that the distinction between “inappropriate behaviour” and “crime” lies in the employment of physical force.
In London and its environs, the post-riot cleanup continues.
For all the pen-pushing, market speculating, fashion-conscious, nasal-gazing tendencies of modern politics, the source of power lies – and always has – in physical force. From the uprisings in the middle-east and the rioting in London, we recognise the cycle of destruction and re-construction that seems to be the driving force behind progress and reform.
In a civilised society, it’s easy to underestimate the extent to which stability relies on a combination of physical restraint and the threat of physical force. When things are running smoothly, the majority isn’t motivated to engage in violence, and those that are must consider that the authorities outnumber them in physical strength. The thief who underwent a citizen’s arrest in Grafton Street last Friday, had weighed up the options, and decided he would try to outrun his enemies. When they caught up with him, and employed considerable force to pin him down, he remembered that respect for physical boundaries is enshrined in our society’s moral make-up. With this in mind, he took his chances and yelled “ASSAULT, ASSAULT, ASSAULT”.
Some time ago I was researching phobias online. I stumbled across a forum of people who shared a fear of being physically attacked. Most of the advice pooled on the forum was rational but unhelpful: the chances of being the victim of an assault are slimmer than you imagine, always carry your keys in your hand and pretend to be on your mobile phone when walking home late etc One piece of advice struck a chord though. It said that no matter how terrifying your ordeal and no matter how bad the prospect of physical pain and psychological scarring, the chances are that you will survive it and the mere knowledge that you will prevail will alleviate the fear.
In Libya, with tanks and shells pelting through the streets, the prospects of survival are not so great. The wounded rebels, with blood streaming down their faces believe so much in a society ultimately governed by physical restraint and the threat of force that they are willing to sacrifice their own body for its cause.
Last weekend, LSB and I got the DART to Dalkey. We stumbled across a charming independent bookstore and I found just the title to assist me in my continuing quest to familiarise myself with the Arab world and its beautiful language. It’s called Al-Jazeera: How Arab TV News challenged the World and is written by Hugh Miles, a young award-winning journalist who was born in Saudi Arabia and studied English Literature at Trinity College (there’s hope for us all!) and Arabic at Oxford.
I first mentioned Al-Jazeera in a column for Teen Times in The Irish Times five years ago. Then as of now, I knew very little about the network, but since we used to pick it up on our makeshift Satellite dish from Aldi, it became something I’d watch when in a curious mood. Part of the reason I want to learn Arabic so badly may be because I associate its sounds with Irish, or because learning it poses much more of a challenge than acquiring a European language. But I know a big part of it is my wanting to be able to understand more about the Middle East and to find out how ideology, the human brain and culture interact.
The first Arab person I got to know was a Syrian asylum seeker, whom I met when I was volunteering at Hatch Hall . His English was quite good and he was very kind. The differences between my worldview and his began to emerge over time though and the nature of these fundamental oppositions fascinated me. He once gave me some sweets, which he had bought with a large part of the €19 a week to which he was entitled. I accepted them gratefully but was perturbed to find later that my mere acceptance may have been an unintended indication of my special regard for him. Since then, I have come into daily contact with students from the Middle East, particularly from Saudi Arabia, Oman and Kuwait. I have had some fascinating discussions with them and invariably these talks have left with the desire to find out more about this large area and its people.
I wish I had the time to devote myself to study but I feel these days that what tiny, little precious time I have left over from work and writing, I am inclined to spend with friends and with LSB rather than over a book or in front of a screen. I’m determined to fit it in though, and over the next few weeks, I will be sharing some of my attempts at learning more about the Middle East and the Arabic language. I need your help though. Would you prefer to join me in learning some basic Arabic or in learning more about the politics and geography of the region? What do you know about Islam? If you played Sporcle, could you name every country in the Middle East? What assumptions do you make about the Arab world and do you have any Arab friends? What about the Uprisings? Suggestions on a postcard, please or – alternatively – if I’m not worth the stamp, do post them below.
A round, red, sad, brutal, 40-year-old face charged by me in a blur. I turned, he stumbled and somebody in an orange carphone warehouse t-shirt caught up and grabbed him from behind. The thief struggled, kicked out and wrenched his arms free but out of nowhere, three more men appeared. While they were thrashing about, a Brown Thomas gift bag fell from the thief’s grip and tumbled strangely, prepostrously to his side.
He was pinned to the ground and fell silent. An enormous crowd had gathered about. Camera phones came out. A little boy held his father’s head and said again and again “Is da real, da?” “It is yeah”, the father replied. “That man was stealing and he’s been caugh’ and he doesn’t like everyone watching him now ’cause he looks like a muppet… ‘Cause he is one”. “Is it real though, da?”. “It sure is, son. The Police are gonna get him and he’s gonna go to jail”.
It was an uncomfortable scene. I wasn’t proud of myself for not being able to leave. I heard a woman remark that the man’s hands were turning white and a lady from the other side of the crowd approached the group and asked them to loosen their grip on his wrist. Suddenly the man let out a roar. “ASSAULT. I’m being ASSAULTED. HELP. HELP. HELP”
“He’s not being assaulted”, the Brown Thomas doorman muttered and asked me politely to stop blocking the entrance to the shop. The man let out another roar, and raised his head. A strong black hand pushed it down again.
The thief managed somehow to hurt the smallest of his captors, who hopped about in pain and blurted out “you scumbag”.
“I can’t breathe!” the man shouted, “I can’t fucking BREATHE. Would you let me breathe!”
At this point, something rather strange happened next to me.
A boy of about fourteen, a Casanova with a country accent, led a group of his friends through the throngs towards three similarly-aged girls who were standing beside me and grinning rather stupidly at the whole scene. “Hey you girls”, he drawled in his not-yet-broken voice. “These are some of my frinds here. Would you ladies be able to show us where Stephen’s Green is?”
The girls stared at him and pointed behind them. “Would you be able to show us like?” the boy continued.
They shrugged. “Stephen’s Green is right up there”, one said, shyly.
“Come on, would you not just show us like?” He smiled.
“I dunno..”.
“Ah go on..”
I was nearly going to offer. But there was a new arrival on the scene.
A younger, dosed-up man I recognised from hanging about town staggered up to where the men were holding down the thief. He looked confused.
“Hey! Leave him be”, he said beginning to tug at him for possession. “He’s not done nothing!” he slurred. “He was shoplifting”, one of the carphone warehouse sales assistants told him, still pressing down on his chest. The thief let out another roar. “I paid the bleeding money didn’t I?”.
Twenty minutes later the Police arrived and made a no-frills arrest. I watched the thief’s silouete disappear as the Garda car drove away. I wondered about what was in that Brown Thomas bag and about the day that abject, addicted, ageing man was born a baby in his mother’s arms.
I – A. Disaffected-Youth – write to express my sincere thanks to you for representing my concerns so eloquently on BBC Newsnight last night. I myself was burdened with the task of looting my local JD Sports store in order to give voice to my worries about the cost of education and my employment prospects in the future.
At 10 pm last night I responded to a tweet which I received on my blackberry. At the time I had been reading Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in order to prepare for my GCSEs which I sit next year. I had been endeavouring to recognise the intrinsic merit of the work, since I -along with several hundred other disaffected youth – am gravely concerned at the trend that has developed of handing out A*s with the cornflakes. It is a sad reality that in the world I live in, educational advancement can only be facilitated by robbing trainers, flatscreen televisions and video games from local shops.
I feel that you conveyed extremely convincingly our shame at having to resort to rioting in order to bring across this message. I look back nostalgically to the time under your mayorship when I had bright hopes for my academic and professional future.
It was with great reluctance that I cast several bricks at the Metropolitan police officers who were attempting to restore order to the streets. It was with yet greater dismay that I set a furniture store on fire. As you say, my great concerns, as a young working-class male are holding down a job and supporting a wife and family. Indeed it is for them that I robbed a games consul, mobile phone and digital camera last night. It is time to start planning for the future. After all, I turn 15 next week.
As you say, the cut in youth services is directly related to this violence. Before these austerity measures were imposed upon my friends and me, we used to spend our evenings playing cards at the local community club. Occasionally, we dabbled in scrabble.
I look forward to a return to these times under your governance in 2012.
Imagine you are Anne Sinclair, third wife of Dominique Strauss-Kahn. You’re sitting in a leather armchair in your Washington mansion, twiddling your thumbs. There’s nothing to do. Normally, in this situation, you’d write your blog Deux ou Trois choses vues d’Amerique. But, malheuresement, along with the rest of your activities, you wound that up too last May. Pity, you think. It had made the list of top 12 Political blogs in France. No mean feat, when you consider the myriad hopeful commentators polluting the blogosphere.
Sigh. You take out your ipad and find yourself googling Dominique. You read again his resignation statement -there’s sure to be a hard copy around somewhere – but let’s face it: such is the world we live in that it’s faster to find your husband’s press release online than in the hand-carved oak filing cabinet upstairs. You smile wryly when you get to the bit where he writes “I think at this time first of my wife—whom I love more than anything—of my children, of my family, of my friends.”
Men are like primitive women, you think. So impulsive, so fragile, so loveable. All the same, really. Well, the successful ones at least. You log into youtube and search for yourself this time. The top results: heartbreaking. You’ve gone from being a superstar journalist to a stoic wife. That’s what a few minutes of misdemeanour with a hotel maid can do to a thirteen-year career in television.
ABC News has compiled a clumsy profile of you– the facts swiped, you suspect, straight from your wikipedia page – and now two uninformed presenters are describing your marriage as that of a “Power couple”. Very original. Bloody Americans. The headline is pathetic too – you’re described as “the woman standing by her man”. They even get a French lady to say with pitiable enthusiasm “she was the number one journalist in France for a very long time”. Wonderful, insightful. That last part makes you just a little bit sad though, the ‘was’. Still, all good things come to an end.
And that bit about the French preferring you to Carla as first lady. That is true. The Telegraph report of the February poll opened “The former supermodel was heavily beaten by glamorous TV presenter Anne Sinclair”. So much for emancipation.
Such is mass media though- it condenses years to minutes in seconds. And don’t you, of all people know it. Still, it’s not like your career is everything. Didn’t you give it all up in 1997 anyway, when Dominique became finance minister and you quit TF1 to avoid conflict of interest?
Ha, conflict of interest. The stuff of affairs. Never have been too bothered by Dominique’s straying. He’s like a dog – always comes back, and there’s a comfortable power in knowing that he couldn’t live without you. Embarrassing though, always. Not personally embarrassing of course– your self-esteem is higher than that – but it’s a bother playing supportive wife all the time. You’re a lot more. You’re his best friend, and a best-selling author. And you won the Sept d’Or.
Besides, when it comes to scandals, you’ve seen it all before. The 500 odd people of note you’ve interviewed over the years have had their own remarkable scandals: Bill and Hillary Clinton – you spoke to them separately of course- the very image of successful marriage in spite of transgression. Madonna, Mitterand, Sarcozy, Gorbachev, Kohl, Schroeder… the list goes on. And of course – how could you forget – Prince Charles; the least likely of seducers but one of the more refreshing to interview, with his hoity Britishness and attempts at polished French.
Of course, over the years some of your intimate friends tentatively suggested leaving Dominique, especially after the affair with Piroska Nagy. But they don’t understand. You are no fool. You knew the man you married. You were his third wife; he your second husband. Sexual fidelity was not high on your list of priorities. He seduced you like he seduced the others. You’re not naïve enough to think otherwise but the respect he has for you is not corporal – he respects your mind, and he knows that your loyalty makes its own demands.
Still, you cannot bear to think of her, that maid. You’ve seen her desperate interview, how could you not have? The bit that makes you shiver is near the beginning. It’s when she says “he come to me and cup my breasts no you don’t have to be sorry”. You can see it, vividly. Your husband. And that maid.
Her broken English, “he won’t say nothing”, “I never see him before”, “they gonna kill me before someone knows what happened to me”. They ring in your ears, those words. First you feel rage, then contempt and finally immense, unbearable guilt, as you look around your expansive, ornate surroundings.
You can’t help being surprised though – in your capacity as a journalist – that more isn’t being made of the occurrence of the sexual encounter in the first place, which is undisputed. Sure, in France the media is liberated from petty feminist cries. But maybe now the rest of the world has woken up to it too: marital fidelity plays no part in public affairs.
Something has triggered a quotation in your mind though. An unpleasant neural connection has occurred. What rushes to mind just now is something your husband said in the “Inside Job” TV documentary about the financial crisis last year. Just the little, unarguable fact that “At the end of the day, the poorest – as always – pay the most”. Nothing more.
She doesn’t have a hope in hell- that immigrant who has been intimate with your husband. But she has inflicted upon you the gravest injury of all – the indignity of being pitied. You close down your ipad, and rise stiffly from your leather chair to make yourself, and Dominique a cup of tea. You’re getting too old for this.
An altered version of the original article with deletions now appears following concerns voiced about privacy:
At 7.30 pm sharp the family made its way into the dining hall. I looked around, scouring the table-tops for my name card and couldn’t believe my eyes when I discovered that the seating plan was no longer arranged strictly according to age! Granted, broad generational trends had been observed: my Oma was at a table with her eldest children, and the male under 21s were placed together. But for the first time, I wasn’t beside Cousin Maximilian, who seemed to have progressed to an ‘older’ table, on the other side of the room (and this in spite of being two months younger than me).
No matter though. Any loss of identity I may have suffered from this departure from routine was immediately assuaged when I inspected the magnificent name tag that had been prepared for me by the very teenage cousins with whom I now shared my table. As you can see, my place card features an impressively sketched cartoon lady. Without schooling in German children’s entertainment, this particular choice may seem incidental. I immediately recognised the lady and her significance however. She is Karla Kolumna, a character in a German cassette series about a little witch called Bibi Blocksberg. Karla Kolumna is an eccentric and formidable reporter, who documents Bibi’s escapades and magical mishaps. My little, wonderful cousins had remembered both my fondness for Bibi and my journalistic aspirations. I couldn’t have been placed at a better table.
As soon as everybody was seated, the waitresses appeared with the starter (riveta-type bread with a selection of herbal dips). They were in traditional Bavarian barmaid attire, with low-cut diandels and had a friendly brusqueness to them. After the starter, they came back to the table with their notepads and turned to each person in turn with the question “Fish or Pork?” I was a little scared to ask them for a vegetarian option after Onkel Fritz reaction to my dietry requirements. “I’ll do it”, whispered my sister, ever a life-saver. They did wonders for me and presented me with a glorious platter of “vegetable bags”. Before we tucked in however, a glass began to clink.
Silence descended upon the room. Tante Renata got up and recited the first poem of the evening: an ode to Tante Rosemarie and a chronicle in verse of her life in Bavaria and subsequent move to Greece (like my mum, she married a man from abroad and moved to his country). The recital featured Rosemarie’s children (my cousins who had produced the nametags) teaching the whole Schultz clan isolated Greek words, which we repeated in unison enough times for the children to give our pronunciation the thumbs up.
As I was tucking into my vegetable bags (or Gemuse Taschen) I had a sudden sinking feeling: I had forgotten to pick up the bag of black sausages!.
“Do it now, quickly”, urged my sister. I took her advice and glided off toward the side door and into the corner of the little room, where I found them in a heap.
I was just in time. Dinner was wrapping up and Onkel Fritz was on his feet. Ever the gruff man in the face of ethical conceit, he had chosen to structure his speech around Onkel Gideon’s concern for the environment and in particular for energy efficiency. Gifts 1-6, which were presented by various members of the Schultz clan – including the youngest, at just under two- followed this theme exactly. Onkel Gideon received a solar-panelled radio, two metal devices which created a flame when rubbed together at a precise angle, a running jacket with the name of the house the nine Schultz children grew up in and a torch.
Onkel Gideon shows off his new running jacket
Gidi, as we call him, is a keen marathon runner. Onkel Fritz, who crunches numbers and calculates meat profits for a living (I think anyway) had managed to work out exactly how much energy the average marathon runner exerts and had weighed the bunch of black sausages to match the calories burned. I presented these to a beaming Gideon and to much applause.
Presentation of black sausages to Onkel Gideon
Pop by again soon for the Schultz Family Mass and perhaps a post- prandial trip to the Bavarian Glassman’s House.
There was barely time to change out of my wet shoes after the hike, as Tante Hortensia had called for the first choir rehearsal for tomorrow’s mass to take place before dinner.
One of the most charming features of the monastery at Kistenhof is the number of amenities which are tucked behind a neat row of modest-looking doors. Without really exploring, I discovered a library, swimming-pool and church.
At five thirty-five, I opened the door labelled “church”and discovered to my dismay that I was late. The Schultz family was already gathered around the piano, singing the Schubert Mass in four-part harmony. Tante Hortensia was conducting with passion and warning that even the most beautiful music performed too slowly becomes “kitchig”. “You’re an alto like me”, whispered my mum as we found a spot behind the sopranos and in front of the tenors.
My Tante Hortensia is amazing. For as long as I can remember, she has been directing all musical operations at Schultzfest events. She is vesatile and perfectionist in equal measure. The children’s choir of ca 1997, of which I was a part, performed a song about toilet paper (aptly named Klopapier) which she accomapinied on guitar. The performance was word-and-pitch-perfect. Now, fourteen years later, in a monastery in a remote German valley, she was just as exact as then.
There was much ado about where Tante Hortensia should stand. She complained that some memebrs of the choir weren’t watching her, and that as a result, the ritardandos weren’t being observed. Certain members of the choir retorted that the person in front of them was obstructing their view. Efforts at re-positioning enjoyed some success but were hampered by the constraints of the altar.
The rehearsal concluded with the arrangement to meet for a brief runthrough at 9 am the following morning.
It was now time to dash back to our respective quarters to get ready for dinner. I leave you with a picture of my mother and me just before we entered the dining hall. More to come, depending on demand.
Familienfest 2011 took place in a monastery in the middle of the valley of Kistenhof, which was shrouded in mist all weekend long. I arrived just before lunch on Saturday afternoon and found thirty-two Schultzs gathered together in the vestibule, exchanging pleasantries. I was just rounding up my small talk with Tante Lisl when Onkel Fritz approached from the side and announced that he was going to kidnap me.
He took me through a side door, which led to a small room, attached to the dining area which we had reserved. He made his way to the back corner and fumbled for a small white plastic bag. “Hier”, he said. “You’re going to hand these over”.
“ ..’Schuldigung?”, I replied.
“You are Present number 7”
“Okay…”
I opened the bag, expecting to find anything but …
Several loose black sausages.
“Are these for Onkel Gideon?”
“Yes”, Onkel Fritz replied. “You are Present number 7. Make sure to come here and pick them up discreetly before dinner. You can hide them under your table until the required moment”.
It takes a Schultz to make the required leap of assumption that Onkel Gideon’s gifts would be presented in strict order according to the structure of Onkel Fritz’s speech.
“Did you know that I was a vegetarian?” I asked Onkel Fritz, who works in agriculture and would probably list meat as his pastime.
“You are?” he roared “that’ll teach you! No wonder you’ve got so scrawny!”
I slunk out and returned to the foyer, where I overheard Tante Hortensia and a nun making arrangements for the Schultz Family mass which would take place the following morning at 9.45 sharp. More of that in the next instalment but for now, I leave you with a picture of the Family hike, or Wanderung which took place in spite of inclement conditions.
Meet Gilbert and Gubar; two ladies whose collaborative feminist treatise The Madwoman in the Attic opens with the question “Is the pen a metaphorical penis?”
I’ve had a long look at my black felt tip. It doesn’t appear virile- though of course that ejaculation might be premature.
For decades, academics and journalists have been considering women’s place in the world. They have been characterised as angels, whores, monsters and mothers. In the name of progress, their gift in writing has been likened to a product of the male reproductive organ.
In western society, traditional notions of a woman’s place in the home have become taboo. Of late, the idea that a woman might choose to become a fulltime mother rather than a professional has been rendered unthinkable.
The reluctance to accept that a woman may decide on motherhood over career advancement was exemplified by a New York Times article by Jack Ewing published last week, which meditated on the surprisingly small number of German women who return to fulltime work after availing of the government-paid 12-month parental leave.
The writer laments the fact that “Despite a battery of government measures … only about 14 percent of German mothers with one child resume full-time work, and only 6 percent of those with two”. He goes on to cite example after example of corporate bodies where only a tiny proportion of women have ended up at the top. Part of the problem, he muses is that “most schools still end at lunchtime, which has sustained the stay-at-home-mother image of German lore”.
While it’s worthwhile to draw attention to gender disparities in top corporate positions, the discourse that surrounds it – while well-intentioned – does a good job of enforcing the idea that women remain passive beings with little control over the course of their lives.
Ewing expresses the misgiving that “when it comes to empowering women, no Teutonic drive or deference seems to work”. Far from promoting any egalitarian cause, such speculation denies women the right to make life choices outside of a socio-political narrative, which subtly yet forcefully dictates that having a career is more worthy than caring for a child and that empowerment can only be measured in economic terms.
Germany is a good example to focus on to illustrate the point. Government measures strongly support the mother in the workplace – she is allowed 12 months parental leave with pay and is guaranteed her job back at the end of it. Although it’s probable that a larger proportion of mothers return to part-time work, the fact that only 14% go back to a fulltime career is indeed surprising.
In the absence of financial and political disincentives however, the fact that is continuously over-looked, is that women are opting not to return to work. Instead of being respected as free agents, those that make this choice are treated as victims of a social order which is portrayed as significantly less than the sum of its egalitarian parts.
For true parity to exist, the Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus mantra must be debunked. Ewing describes Germany as “one of the countries in most need of female talent” (my italics) but doesn’t define what he means by the term. If male and female talent aren’t viewed with equality, the prospect of a roughly 50:50 breakdown of gender in all sectors of professional life is unrealisable.
Furthermore, unless it’s accepted as equally scandalous that the proportion of male nurses is equivalent to that of female corporate executives, a discussion of gender can never be detached from a social weighting in favour of money.
Were society’s priorities reversed, public discussion might centre around the outrage that a man’s right to parental leave is considerably more restricted than a woman’s, that a boy’s emotional development is stunted by the expectation that he will advance up a corporate ladder and that the male body is no more than a military tool.
While you can’t spell “metaphorical penis” without pen, as I look again at my black felt tip I begin to think that Gilbert and Gubar might have been feminists equipped with rather (pardon me) fertile imaginations.
A small and silent rebellion is taking place on our shores. Though they remain anonymous, the twenty-two dissenters are known to carry hammers. A number among them are purported to disguise themselves with a mass of white curls, which they pin to their heads. They are protected by Article 35 of the Constitution and the extent of that defence will be put to the Irish people in a referendum next September. Should it be passed, the band of twenty-two judges who have elected not to make a voluntary contribution to the revenue in lieu of the levies imposed upon all other public sector workers will be forced to take a cut in pay as their 126 colleagues have already seen fit to do.
The judiciary must remain independent, so for that reason Article 35.5 of Bunreacht na hEireann states simply that The remuneration of a judge shall not be reduced during his continuance in office. From a political, psychological and economic perspective such reasoning is utterly non sequential.
Given that the aim of such a clause appears to be to prevent judges from state influence, that purpose is itself contradicted by a notable omission. Judges’ pay may not be reduced but it may be increased at the whim of a minister looking for a favour, for example. The possibility of a salary rise is the principle behind performance-related pay, which employers use as an incentive in order to encourage workers to perform in line with their expectations and desires.
The difference between loss aversion; working to avoid a drop in salary and performance-related pay is trivial from a psychological perspective. As a motivating factor, the distinction lies in personality type: some people are more encouraged by risk avoidance and others by self-advancement. There is no reason why judges should be disproportionately oriented toward the former.
There is another principle that has been overlooked in the omission in Article 35.5 however, which is psychologically universal. You see, if somebody does you a good turn, you like to return the favour. If the Minister decides to increase pay, there’s a niggling, self-imposed obligation to display gratitude by performing in accordance with his desires. Social theorists have called it Reciprocal Determinism and in everyday parlance we say: I scratch your back; you scratch mine.
Of course, all of this speculation treats the individual as a machine: you put this in and you get that out. The prospect that judges will carry out their duties in relation to their salary is akin to considering that teachers will write report cards for students in accordance to their pay slip and that a nurse’s bedside manner fluctuates in tandem with his or her remuneration. It’s well known that poor conditions lead to sloppy work but in the case of judges, sloppy work results in poor decision making generally rather than in partiality.
Furthermore, where an entire class of workers is in question, an individual is less likely to respond with venom than in a case where their pay alone has been cut.
Where the issue of judicial partiality arises glaringly obviously is in the appointment procedure. Since candidates need to be selected by the Oireachtas and favoured by the president, the hope of a justice system independent of political influence is thwarted before it has any hope of being established.
This Septermber, when the people cast their votes to elect their president they are by extension influencing the selection of their future judges. It is this cosy relationship between politics and judicial administration which Article 35.5 sustains rather than prevents.
The measures taken by the new government to curb these relationships have so far been encouraging. Leo Varadkar’s threat not to reappoint all seven of the board members of the DAA should the bonus allotted to Chief Executive Brendan Collier not be reversed is a sign that a new era of political responsibility might be upon us. Brendan Howlin’s plan to cap salaries of future Chief Executives of Commercial state companies is also a signal that politics is moving away from its traditional links with largescale enterprise.
As they beat their hammers on their oak writing tables and whisper “Objection” in advance of September’s Referendum, the twenty-two dissenters will inevitably privately concede that the scrapping of Article 35.5 represents good riddance to bad rubbish. Objection over-ruled.
Kate Ferguson 