Writing for life

Published in the WOW! supplement of the Evening Echo 09/05/2007

“Dad, why are there pictures of those people all over the place?”

We were driving along the road minding our own business when the twins noticed the election posters that had suddenly sprung up. They’d asked a perfectly valid question, and as I pondered my answer, I realised that there really wasn’t any good reason for the posters at all.

Who were these people, the girls wanted to know, and what were they for? It’s funny how children instinctively manage to cut to the quick. What were they for indeed? I didn’t have a convincing answer, so I fudged it, giving them a sweeping overview of the party political system, and explaining that Mum and Dad would be going to the polls to vote soon. Of course this prompted more questions than I had answers, and under my breath I cursed the very existence of politicians.

The fundamentals of our democratic system should be easy enough to explain, even to a couple of curious six-year-olds. Yet somehow it manages to become incredibly complicated as soon as you throw politicians into the mix. The waters get muddied and things that should be clear and straightforward become completely unfathomable.

To understand what I mean you just have to listen to a politician, any politician, speak (and goodness knows we have plenty of opportunity to do that at the moment). Strip out the weasel words, qualifiers and meaningless platitudes and you’ll find that there’s very little of any substance left. Is there a school somewhere that teaches these people how to talk without actually saying a damn thing?

All of this ambiguity makes it exceedingly difficult for us, the punters, to make an intelligent, policy-based decision on who we’re going to vote for. And that’s where the posters come in.

It’s not a beauty contest of course – one look at some of the images splashed around the countryside soon puts that notion to bed – but it is about exposure. Forget fighting the election on solid, coherent policies eloquently communicated to the electorate; instead get your mug in front of as many people as possible, as often as possible and hope your name is the one that sticks come polling time. It makes a bit of a mockery of the democratic process, but hey, it works.

One of the curious things about election posters is that you never, ever see anyone putting them up. I suspect the main parties have legions of loyal supporters who come crawling out of the woodwork at election time. Their mission: to sneak around the country under cover of darkness indiscriminately plastering their candidate’s face onto every available surface.

They don’t care where they stick them – motorways, roundabouts, electricity pylons – it’s all about maximum visibility with little consideration for anything else. Councils are being inundated with complaints about inappropriately positioned posters; the Road Traffic Authority has warned that posters are obscuring road signs and distracting motorists, putting lives at risk; and the ESB has warned that improperly sited posters are causing fires and power cuts. And yet the politicians persist.

Why? Well, there’s a war going on out there – and when it comes to war everybody knows that a few civilian casualties are acceptable…. As for the girls, they still want to know what politicians are for – and I’m still struggling to come up with a convincing answer.

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