They think it is all over!

Well it will be on Friday 26^th February for the next five year. Or will it?

In under 24 hours we will all be in the solitude of an election ballot booth, pencil or pen in hand, a ballot paper facing us, displaying in alphabetical order the very best profile shots of the 12 candidates on offer here in Waterford City and County.

If you were to believe all the election spin we are reading, hearing and seeing on our national TV channels, then every party is going to get the number one vote from every doorstep visited. This of course means that all 12 of our candidates will be elected!

In our four TD constituency we will of course only see four TD’s represent us in the next Dáil and these four good men or women will hope to have five years to make a real difference to Waterford and the people they represent. So making the right decision will have a bearing on how our City and County perform over the next five years and yet I do feel that there may be a minority Government formed and we will be back in the same sterile election booth sooner rather than later.

Quite clearly there will be some very interesting shenanigans post #GE16 when the main political parties start the political scrambling and begin to barter a better deal with Independents, the smaller parties and anyone who can be bought and sold for a handful of gold.

We may even end up with an old historical political map where the odd few battle hardened Independents can hold a coalition Government to ransom. Where support votes can be guaranteed with vast sums of money for roads, for schools and of course the Independents' favourites hospitals and education.

Though only living here in Waterford City for fifteen years I do recall in previous Dáils many political bounty hunters making lots of hay whilst the sun shone with cobbled together Governments that were literally held together with no more than sticky tape. This type of Government is no good to man or beast and in fact makes an utter farce of the current political system.

Do we really wish to see the return to the omnishambles of a Government where the future governance of the whole country is held to a payoff by the localised whims and promised votes of country bumpkin politics? This type of political rule is unfortunately still at large in Ireland and we need to move away from such Dickensian ways and practices. But I fear this time around the politics will not have engaged with sufficient “new” voters to move us in the right direction and deliver a better and more transparent political system.

Rest assured that the usual suspects who have graced the front pages of our board sheets, for all the wrong reasons over the last five years, will be returned to the Dáil for #GE16. These local “cowboy politicians” have for some unexplained rationale lots of grassroots support, in some abundance, as there is no real alternative to the political malaise that grips the Country.

I have often wondered if the political Status Quo actually suits the current politics we have to live with on a daily basis, as to have to engage with potential new voters takes time, effort, and above all an awful lot of imagination.

We all know that imagination and our current political representatives are not a marriage made in heaven! So it may well take another generation to make a real change in the way we engage and vote in Ireland or it might take a hung Government and a few months of political infighting, bickering and squabbling to finally get all voters to see the woods for the trees. 

#GE16 will not go down in history as the most exciting, but do hold your breath as another #GE may just be around the corner.