Look, I don’t mean to be patronising. If you’ve been to school, you know this; you’ll know it like the back of your hand. But today, it feels like perhaps we need to go back to basics.
The word democracy means ‘rule by the people’, derived from the Greek ‘demos’, for ‘common people’, and ‘kratos’, for ‘rule’ or ‘strength’. Democracy, in other words, is a form of government in which political control is exercised by all the people, either directly or through elected representatives.
Ireland is a parliamentary, representative democratic republic. Scrap the ‘directly’ bit from the definition above: representative democracy is a form of government in which power is held by the people and exercised indirectly through elected representatives who make decisions – and who are then held accountable for their activity within government.
Now to the elements of direct democracy. When does a referendum need to be held? Whenever, says the Citizens Information website, the government wants to change the constitution. This is interesting, especially today. Is it when the government wants to, or the common people? If the former differs from the latter, how do we hold the government to account?
Cynics may say, bluntly, that we hold them to account by not reelecting them when it’s time for another general election. But what if the government is actively preventing a general election being called, using tactics so undemocratic that they should, by any democratic definition, be kicked out of the Dáil with immediate effect?
Year on year, the March for Choice grows, explosively. Every day, pregnant people break the law by necessity as they import and swallow pills to induce a miscarriage. Elected representatives put forward bills proposing a referendum to let the people decide whether it’s time to amend the constitution with regards to a change in attitudes towards reproductive rights. And as the government realises it’s divided on the issue and a vote would likely lead to collapse, what does it do? It blocks the bill, instead pointing to the process of a Citizens’ Assembly – yes, another group supposedly representing the people, just not actually democratically elected – to avoid having to make any decision on the issue at all.
To be clear, we’re not talking about making a decision on reproductive rights. We’re talking about the decision to call a referendum to let the people, the common people, decide. What was that definition of representative democracy again? Oh yes, representatives who make decisions. How can we hold them to account when they refuse to make decisions out of fear that they’ll trigger a general election?
It’s a shambles, and it’s not democracy. There’s no sense of rule or strength on the part of the public. We feel ignored, helpless and increasingly angry.
Judging by the government’s current tactics, the timeframe discussed for the Citizens’ Assembly, and the processes involved in preparing for a referendum, any change to the 8th amendment is years away. Just by the end of this year, another 850 people will have left Ireland to access reproductive healthcare elsewhere. Many more will have taken the abortion pill at home or remained pregnant against their will, and thousands will have gone through the maternity system without the right to informed consent.
I’m off to the Dáil to rally. I’m tired, and I’m losing respect for the people supposedly representing us. Who knows what the strength of the common people will look like if nothing changes soon? The system is broken.
