There are Assembly elections up above this week and I have to say I’m struck by the lack of commentary in the South and on ‘southern’ blogs about the elections. I will be reading Slugger a bit more closely this week and try to catch the news bulletins and election coverage on BBC Northern Ireland etc.
Is the lack of coverage a reflection on the lack of importance of the elections to politics in the Republic or the lack of importance or enthusiasm for the elections in the region itself? Even Irishelection.com (still glowing from Saturday night) has not had significant inputs on the election itself that I can find.
Is a slip of the pen Maman Poulet? ;>
Writing as an immigrant of British stock who has lived in Ireland for 31 years, I have always felt some awkwardness about NI politics. There was a fair degree of nationalist belief that reunification was just around the corner and so the proverbial boat should not be rocked. Oh when I think of some of the dross that Haughey used to spout at FF Ard Fheis speeches, which almost assumed the deal was done and the muppets used to applaud wildly. I think at some level there is still a ‘quieter’ hope that a settlement will come about and best not talk about it too much.
More pragmatically, I think there is also a lack of appreciation about NI politics, a lack of knowledge about local NI politics which stymies discourse. While NI is very much rooted in conflict politics, there is a struggle, slow and painful, to change society. But I do think many people are perlexed by the detail of ongoing (local) identity politics debates about marching, etc. These debates, although they may havee deeper politics, don’t seem to be terribly edifying as politics spectacles to outsiders and so there’s a risk to write about this. For my part, I have always been more comfortable talking about American, British or US politics. Am I just doing the ‘safety dance’ or am I really a Brit under it all? God I should be doing a blog.
personnally I have no faith in anything coming from it.