QuoteHeadline today "IMF delays funding until Dáil vote on rescue deal"
What we have seen in the day after the budget, was the true face of this Fianna Fail government, complete denial, obnoxiously rude, arrogant and sneering condescension to the people. What we saw in effect, was the face of a government who are immune, chronically corrupted by power and corrupted by the absoluteness of this power.
As long as they act within their constitutional mandate, they can decide what constitutes the national interest.
There is no one fix. In Ireland there are a multitude of lessons to be learned and acted upon from this tissue of fiascos. But one big lesson, is that a people united on their constitution can not be thwarted by parliament, they can not be defeated (in the courts anyway) and a teeny weeny republic can stand up to a foreign nation 300 times bigger. Nations are bound to respect another's sovereignity. The UK/NL had to respect the sovereignity of tiny Iceland's democracy, even if their own constitutions did not allow for such vagaries. The Iceland government had made a deal with UK/NL, but the deal was rejected by the people using the constitution. The will of the Iceland people had to be respected by the UK/NL. Even the IMF had to respect the sovereign right of a people to reject a treaty and back off from trying to exert pressure to accept. The UK/NL had to accept, that although the Iceland government had signed an international agreement/treaty, they had not the full mandate to sign, if the people exercised their right to take away that mandate. The UK/NL had to then renegotiate on the basis that they were negotiating with the Iceland people.
Now you can imagine how a small clause of accountability to the people in major sovereign issues, would have changed the situation in the negotiation between the Irish gov and EU. The Irish Gov would have had much more pressure to act in the interests of the people. We would have had much more disclosure on issues. The Government stated that the bondholders were protected by law, that in the event of a bank failure they had equal right with depositers to assets. But the banks had a solvency crisis, there was no fix for this solvency crisis. I have not heard an explanation why a law could not be passed protecting the depositers, making them first claimant and making it retrospective.
I don't believe the protection of the people from inept government should necessarily fall on the President.
Here, as head of state of a sovereign republic, the Iceland president is being interrogated by an obnoxious Paxman on Newsnight and he manages to patiently give him a lecture on democracy. YouTube Paxman
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