Saints and Ladders

“Crowded” is a word that aptly describes both the recent Irish Presidential election and the on-going race for the Republican Party's nomination. On October 27^th a total of 7 candidates vied for the support of the Irish people making it the most heavily contested presidential poll in the country's history. Republicans have faced a choice just as varied and their allegiances have shifted wildly as early favourites have been brought low by gaff and scandal only for once doubtful candidates to capitalise and see their poll numbers swell.

The past month bore witness to the implosion of Republican hopeful and pizza mogul Herman Cain. No less than 4 women have come forward to accuse Mr. Cain of sexual misdeeds, leading to a plummet in support among the Republican's conservative Christian base and his subsequent exit from the race.

Sexual misconduct also spelled the end for Irish independent presidential candidate Senator David Norris, when it emerged that he had written several letters to Israeli judicial and political figures seeking clemency for a former partner, Ezra Yizhak Nawi, who was convicted of the statutory rape of a 15 year old boy. Cain's withdrawal means he will avoid the eventual fate of Norris, who faced down public ire to contest the national poll but ended up with a mere 6.4% of the vote down from a high of 40% in pre-election opinion polls.

At the other end of the spectrum Newt Gingrich has risen, phoenix like, from depths of 4% in July to top opinion polls in many early voting states. This remarkable turn-around has stunned political commentators, many of whom wrote Gingrich off after the mass resignation of his campaign staff over the summer. This late stage surge bares comparing to that of Sean Gallagher, a sprightly 49 year old entrepreneur and TV host, who saw an 18 point leap in his poll ranking over just 9 days in mid October.

Gallagher maintained a commanding lead in the run up to the election with polls conducted the weekend before hand putting his support between 38 and 40%. His luck ran out when fellow nominee Martin McGuinness accused him of soliciting a donation for the now disgraced Fianna Fáil party in 2008.

Bank records later appeared to exonerate Mr. Gallagher but the polls were just 3 days away and the damage had been done. He went on to poll a respectable 28.5% but was swept away by the Labour Party candidate Michael D. Higgins.

The long suffering Mitt Romney, whose campaign recently launched a targeted counter attack on the resurgent Gingrich, may come to regret his course of action. The temperate Mr. Higgins took his place as Ireland's head of state by refusing to indulge in mud slinging and staying the only consistently scandal-free candidate. Even Mr. Gallagher acknowledged this, congratulating him on running a “positive” campaign as the results came in confirming victory for the 70 year old poet. As the Iowa caucuses draw ever closer Mr. Romney may wish he had left the hatchet job to another in the crowded field on nominees.

Syria: In Search of a Tipping Point

With the death of Moammar Gadhafi behind us the world is now eyeing the teetering regimes of other autocratic rulers in the Arab world and wondering who might be the next to fall. Syria, whose uprising began in earnest in March, makes for an interesting candidate but there are several key differences between it and previously toppled Governments which could result in a softer landing for the regime and its president, Bashar al-Assad.

First and foremost Syria is a diverse place. President Assad described it as the “hub” of the Middle East in a recent interview. The country contains significant Christian, Kurdish and Alawite Muslim minorities. The Sunni Muslim majority, which forms the bulk of the protest movement, campaigns for social justice and an end to Alawite domination of the security services. President Assad, himself an Alawite, plays on the minority's fears of mob rule by the Sunni majority and also of the possible Islamification of Syria should his secular Ba'ath party be deposed.

Syrian geography also distinguishes it from somewhere like Libya where miles of open desert between towns gave intervening NATO forces an advantage when targeting regime loyalists. The relative proximity of Syria's population centres would be a liability to any foreign forces seeking to minimise civilian casualties, something bitter experience in Iraq and elsewhere has taught the West to value above all else.

No side is yet calling for direct military intervention. For his part, President Assad has said that interference in Syria would destabilise the entire region. The protest movement at first opposed any kind of outside influence but elements are now calling for a Libyan style no-fly-zone to be imposed which would negate one of the regimes key advantages in the conflict. At a recent meeting of the World Economic Forum in Jordan, US Senator John McCain gave a similar line saying that “The Assad regime should not consider that it can get away with mass murder.” and called for a renewed focus on “partial military operations” which “might be considered to protect civilian lives in Syria.”

The Syrian uprising has been striking for the sheer bloodiness of the regime's response to the protests. The UN estimates that over 3000 have been killed so far and the Government has put military vehicles on the streets of several towns it sees as particularly troublesome including Daraa, Jisr ash-Shughur, Hama and Homs. Violence shows no signs of abating with the death toll reaching 40 in a single day recently for the first time since May.

Responses to the crack down from international institutions have varied. A draft resolution put before the UN security council in October, which would have condemned the crackdown, was vetoed by China and Russia, ever the forces of non-interference. Four other council members abstained from voting even though sanctions and an arms-embargo were dropped from the resolution in order to give it wider appeal. A letter penned by the Arab League calling for an end to violence against the protesters, removal of military vehicles from the streets and the release of political prisoners delivered to the Syrian foreign minister on Sunday has gone unanswered at the time of this writing. Speaking in Tripoli, where he was announcing an end to the campaign there, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen ruled out military intervention in Syria but personally condemned the crack down.

It is the lack of political will to interfere that, more so than any other factor, will give Bashar al-Assad the time he needs to draw a bloody line under the protests. The people of Syria need the support of the international community if they are to follow in the tentatively hopeful footsteps of Libya and Egypt. If they don't receive it they will be dragged down the bleak path trodden by Yemen and Bahrain.

The Vote Behind the Vote

 Like a local building society collapsing simultaneously with a multi-billion euro financial institution, the referenda taking place this October have garnered shockingly little media attention and inspired little debate outside the sullen chambers of the Oireachtas. On the face of it a direct competition between seven outsized personalities all competing for a single prize will obviously garner more public interest but when you dig a little deeper the referenda have some very interesting personalities of their own standing behind them.

The twenty-ninth amendment to the constitution is about the pay of serving judges. Currently article 35 section 5 of the constitution states that “The remuneration of a judge shall not be reduced during his continuance in office.” The inability of the Government to reduce a judge's pay means they cannot use the threat of a pay reduction to influence judicial decisions. This independence is seen as sacrosanct and is enshrined in the constitutions of most developed countries. While judicial independence is undeniably essential to the functioning of a free and fair democracy, this blanket protection has resulted in judges being spared the public sector wage cuts and pension levy applied to every other public sector worker.

In November 2009 Fine Gael's then Justice Spokesperson and current Justice Minister, Alan Shatter, put forward a private members bill that would have called for a referendum similar to the one taking place this year. The Fianna Fail – Green Party coalition at the time declined to give the bill a hearing before the Dáil but the referendum issue went on to form part of Fine Gael's election campaign. Speaking to the Seanád in advance of their vote on the issue Mr. Shatter said “this amendment is not primarily about money. It is all about fairness and the need to ensure that judicial independence is no longer undermined, through no fault of its own, by the perception of judges as an elite group who are not contributing their fair share at a time of unprecedented economic difficulty.”

The bill passed unanimously in the Dáil and was opposed by only two senators in the Seanad, one of whom was presidential candidate David Norris. Part of the reason the bill passed so effortlessly is that the little opposition there was were divided over their concerns. The judges for their part were never opposed to the idea that their wage packets should decrease due to the worsening state of the public finances. In fact some 85% of them reduced their wage in line with the pension levy voluntarily and, when appointed Chief Justice in July, Susan Denham chose to forego the €38,000 pay increase the promotion entitled her to. What the judges did have a problem with was the ability to reduce their pay being handed to the Irish Government in any shape or form. Safeguards in the articles' sub-sections were not enough to satisfy their concerns for their independence and they expressed these concerned in a memorandum which was at first partly leaked to the Irish Times and later published in its entirety on the court services website.

Opposition senators also expressed concerned but theirs were understandable different to those of the judges. Judicial independence did feature among the questions put to Alan Shatter in the Seanad debate but they took a back seat to concerns over the haste with which the legislation was brought to bear and wider concerns about the current (un)competitive state of Ireland's legal profession. Without a unified opposing ideology to the bill the referendum looks set to sail through with a Irish Times commissioned poll conducted on October 8^th showing 88% support for the legislation.

What's wrong with FPtP?

On May 5th Britons will go to the polls to decide whether or not they wish to change the system by which they appoint legislators to the House of Commons. The current system, First Past the Post (FPtP), is disparaged as "broken" by policy makers from across the political spectrum but its mooted replacement, the Alternative Vote (AV) system, has its own flaws which is why the current Conservative government is campaigning for a no vote, putting them at logger-heads with their Liberal Democrat coalition partners.

So what's wrong with the current system? On paper it sounds fair, the country is divided into districts of similar population, every citizen gets one vote and the candidate who receives the most endorsements goes on to represent her district in the national legislator. But this system has a number of flaws and over time political scientists have come up with some pretty interesting solutions to address them.

The first problem with FPtP is that it's entirely possible for a candidate that represents a minority of the voters in her district to be elected. Imagine 4 political parties field candidates in a particular district. The Green, Yellow and Blue parties each receive 24% of the votes and the Red party gets 28%. The Red party wins the seat and a person with the support of less then 30 in every 100 people in her district goes on to represent said district in parliament. Two systems have been proposed to help eliminate this problem. The first is two-round voting. Under this system a preliminary election is held after which all but the two most popular candidates are eliminated. The two remaining candidates then face each other in a run-off. With only 2 choices possible the winner will, by definition, have majority support. Elections can be costly though which is where the AV system comes in. It guarantees majority support and voters only have to go to the polls once. Voters rank the candidates in order of preference. If no candidate receives an objective majority of the votes cast the least popular candidate is eliminated from the race and their votes are redistributed to the candidates that their voters had indicated as their second preference. This process of elimination and redistribution continues until someone passes the 50% threshold.

Both these systems solve the problem of minorities controlling legislation on the local level but there is a further problem that plagues both systems and it becomes apparent when you look at things on the national level. Imagine 2 districts; District 9 and District 13. Both have a voting-age population of 700. In District 9 the Blue party tallies 400 votes and the Yellow party receives 300. In District 13 the Red party gets 400 votes and the Yellow party again polls 300. In the national legislator these districts will be represented by one Red and one Blue candidate even though the Yellow party has more support in the region then either of them. The system suggested as a cure for this is Proportional Representation (PR) in which a party that received, for example, 15% of the votes nationwide would receive 15% of the seats in the legislator subject to a minimum threshold.

So if PR is known to solve the problems inherent in both the FPtP and AV voting systems why isn't it widely implemented? Their are two very bad outcomes that can result from a pure PR system. First, small parties can multiply leading to rainbow coalitions without a clear leadership structure incapable of taking immediate action in times of crisis. Second, minorities with diffuse geographical support are not always the kind of minorities that deserve representation. Indeed deserving minorities such as those based on religion, culture or ethnicity tend to be geographically clustered and are thus no better served by PR then by AV or FPtP. Minorities with diffuse geographical support tend to represent the fringe of political ideology, the far-left and the far-right. In the above example switching to a pure PR system would hand the Yellow party a clear a majority. If the Yellow party is of an extremist bent that country may never see another election.

In light of the fact that each of the voting systems has its flaws contemporary commentators favour a mixed system with a certain fraction of the seats in the legislator being decided on a traditional FPtP or AV basis and the remainder awarded to parties on the basis of their nationwide performance (i.e. on a PR basis). To see how this would improve matters imagine the election results in districts 9 and 13 above were repeated in a further 48 districts. Under pure FPtP this would result in a government composed entirely of Reds and Blues, quite unfair for all those Yellow voters. But say we added 40 seats on a PR basis as they do in Scotland. 16 would go to the Yellow party, 12 to the Reds and 12 to the Blues. The Yellows would now find themselves capable of taking part in a coalition government, giving them the recognition they deserve, while the Red or Blue party would have a clear political mandate to govern, controlling 37 seats in a 53 seat coalition.

The Rise and Fall of The Quinn Group

 

In August 2010 Sean Quinn became the latest in a growing line of Irish business tycoons to part ways with that most ubiquitous of status symbols, his helicopter. The €4 million Agusta 109 was of course the property of the Quinn Group, not Mr. Quinn himself, but when it was leant to family friend Bertie Ahern during the former Taoiseach's re-election campaign the distinction seems to have hardly mattered. The helicopter's history is as much a window into the incestuous world of Irish business and politics as the news of its sale was a dangerous portent of turbulent times ahead for the Quinn Group and it's founder, dubbed the 164^th richest individual on the planet in 2008 by Forbes magazine but who now faces bankruptcy.

The Quinn Group started out as a small quarrying operation supplying washed gravel to the building industry in 1973. The business soon took off, expanding into manufacturing, hospitality, property and has even taken a faltering step into the energy market, applying for planning permission to build two gas-fired power plants in 2007. The market for which it is best known however, and which seems to have been its undoing, is financial services. It began with the launch of Quinn Direct Insurance Ltd. in 1996 which specialised in non-life insurance products and followed up with the launch of Quinn Life in 2000 which would go on to acquire the Irish operations of Bupa. Throughout these years of dynamic growth the Quinn family remained very much in charge of every business under the Quinn umbrella. Their dealings would eventually lead to censure and downfall.

The Irish financial regulator handed down a record €3.25 million fine to the Quinn Group over disclosed internal loans that enabled the Quinn family to acquire a 15% stake in Anglo Irish Bank. The bank's nationalisation by Irish government after it went into a tailspin in 2008 saw these shares all but wiped out. Unconvinced of their ability to repay bank loans, Anglo recently moved to oust the Quinns from their management positions within the Quinn group and, in a joint-venture with American insurer Liberty Mutual, looks set to snap up Ireland's second largest insurer which is now in administration.

As the appointed administrators have set about unravelling the shady inner workings of the Quinn Group's most important company the Government has proposed a levy on home and car insurance policies in order to make up the €620 million of obligations that Quinn Insurance's new owners are unwilling to meet. This has provoked a harsh reaction from Irish consumer advocacy groups which feel the Irish consumer should not have to bear the cost of the Quinn family's misconduct. With €2.9 billion in outstanding in outstanding loans to Anglo Irish alone, Mr. Quinn may soon have to sell more than the family helicopter.

UN Security Council Expansion

A recent state visit by US Preisdent Barack Obama to India, where he endorsed India's bid for a permanent seat on the UN security council, has once again raised the issue of expansion in the world's foremost peace-keeping institution. The proposed expansion or reorganisation is serious business. Despite the lampooning it has received as a result of it's recent lack of progress on halting Iran's rouge nuclear ambitions, nothing has the power to cause a diplomatic stir at the highest levels quite like the prospect of losing or gaining a seat on the security council. There are several important points at issue here including the current state of the council, how it should look ideally and what states should fill it's seats.

First how it currently looks. The security council has 15 seats, 5 are permanent, 10 other members are elected by the General Assembly for 2 year terms. The members are chosen by regional blocs. The African bloc chooses 3 members; the Latin American and Caribbean, Asian, and Western European and Others blocs choose 2 members each; and the Eastern European bloc chooses 1 member. Also, one of these members is always an "Arab country," alternately from the Asian or African bloc. The 5 permanent members are basically the winners of WWII, namely the US, Britain, France, Russia and China. Each of these permanent seat holders has a veto which they can use to block any substantial resolution from being passed.

Obviously this structure is outdated, but how should it change? The world has gotten more multi-polar in the last half a century, and certainly since the American dominated early 90s. To reflect this the number of permanent seats on the council should increase from 5 to 7. With more regional powers the body will have greater legitimacy. Overall however membership should stay capped at 15 so that the headaches caused by 2 extra vetoes are at least somewhat off-set by 2 less rotating members.

So how should the new seats be parcelled out? Firstly China, Russia and the US all deserve to keep their seats. These 3 countries represent 35% of global GDP and 26% of it's population. Doing business without them is simply not an option. France and Britain do not deserve a seat each, but the EU does deserve one. It is the world's largest economy by GDP and is increasingly learning to speak with one voice on the world stage. A shared security council seat will only further the cause of integration. That leaves 3 seats open in this scenario and one of those should go to India. The world's biggest democracy has it's failings, sprawling bureaucracy and a poor stewardship of Kashmir among them, but since it's liberation, and especially in recent years, it has taken strides in improving the lot of it's citizens, lifting millions out of poverty and into a new global middle class. Next up, Indonesia. This south-east Asian nation is significant enough to warrant a seat for several reasons. It's economy is thriving, it's politics are stable and it has the world's largest Muslim population so it's inclusion should draw approval from Middle-Eastern powers such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia while soothing Pakistani nerves, which are sure to be jangled at India's ascension to permanent member status.

So who deserves the last seat? Japan's name is often bandied about. A hardy global player for sure, Japan's economy has only just slipped into third place in the world after nearly 20 years in which it's growth never breached a 3% per year ceiling, and often performed far worse. Another factor that stands to it is that it is a western looking democracy in a region that could be of strategic importance in the coming years of regime change in North Korea. However, both these assets could be seen as liabilities. Resilience means nothing if Japan's economic decline is terminal, and the forecasts there do not bode well. It's western orientation also makes China more hostile to it's candidateship. Rather then fight China to give a waning power a seat on the council I would rather see the seat go to another rising star; Brazil. Without a doubt the poster child for South America, Brazil is a beacon of democracy and sensible market reform. New oil finds will augment it's importance on the world stage while big strides in pedology promise to turn the Cerrado into a regional bread basket.

This leaves the small but significant question of which blocs should lose regional voting powers. Since it is the only continent in this scenario without a super-power on the council, Africa deserves to keep all 3 of it's elected representatives. With it's diverse interests so poorly represented by Russia, Eastern Europe also deserves to keep it's rotating member. The Western European and Others bloc has suffered a set back in that it has one less permanent seat then before but a gain in that the one seat it still has is far more representative. That said it should retain both of it's two rotating seats as it represents countries as disparate as Canada, Israel and Australia. That leaves Asia and Latin America losing one seat each. I feel this is justified given the addition of Indonesia and Brazil to the permanent security council. As for the rule about one rotating member always being from an Arab state, I leave it to the talking shops of the UN and the Arab League to decide if such a rule is necessary once a Muslim country, and a Sunni Muslim country at that, has a permanent seat.

Let's Talk About Sri Lanka

One of the world's longest running civil wars ended in May of last year. For 26 years the Government of Sri Lanka fought against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a separatist organisation seeking statehood for the country's Hindu minority. Although the conflict has been on-going for more then two and a half decades it was only towards the end that the international community really started to take notice, mostly because of the horrendous rates of civilian casualties in the closing stages. Before I get into the nitty gritty of death tolls, displacement rates and so on I want to say a bit about Mahinda Rajapaksa, the country's president and the rebel outfit he faced. 

Rajapaksa was elected to Sri Lanka's Parliament at the age of 24 and served a stint as prime-minister before becoming president in 2005. In addition to the presidency he is his own Finance and Defence minister. His brothers occupy many top jobs in  Sri Lanka's Government including secretary of defence and speaker of parliament (the only office capable of impeaching a Sri Lankan president). Following the defeat of the Tamil Tigers the chief of the Sri Lankan armed Forces, Sarath Fonseka, challenged Rajapaksa in a presidential election. He was subsequently court marshalled, found guilty of using "treacherous words", stripped of his rank and medals and sent to prison. Sri Lanka's constitution limits presidents to two terms in office. Rajapaksa is currently trying to change this.

The Tamil Tigers were, objectively speaking, some of the worst human rights abusers and war criminals the world has ever seen. Their offences include some 163 suicide bombings, attacks on blatantly civilian targets including Buddhist shrines, the conscription of tsunami orphans as child soldiers and the ethnic cleansing of any territories they captured. During the closing stages of the war the Tigers prevented thousands of civilians from fleeing the conflict zone in order to use them as human shields to prevent army shelling. The tactic failed miserably.

Now you know a little bit about the forces involved let's talk some more about the campaign and it's consequences. At it's height just prior to the defeat of the rebels and for some time afterwards the war displaced some 300,000 Tamils from their farms and homes. Today, a year and a half after the end of combat operations, around 6000 are still prevented from returning home. Now this isn't all the Government's fault. When they started losing serious ground to the army the Tigers began lacing villages with mines and a lot of areas just aren't yet safe to go back to but there are other, more nefarious cases. An additional two ministries Rajapaksa manages to find room for on his stationary are Highways And Ports and Aviation. Many Tamil villagers are returning home to find their lands have been cleared for post-war development projects, power stations, industrial zones, etc.

The defeat of the Tigers has had a startling cost in human lives. Sri Lanka's defence ministry estimates that 6261 soldiers were killed and another 29,551 injured in the final 3 years of the fighting. The death toll over the course of the war could be as high as 23,000. This figure doesn't include civilian or rebel deaths, both of which were probably higher then military casualties. With the conflict finally at an end you might expect Sri Lanka to ease up on it's military spending. On the contrary, the army it set to grow by up to 300,000 more troops to secure the Tamil territories.

If there's one thing that makes me optimistic about the Sri Lanka's future it's that it's people are no slouches when it comes to democracy. When Rajapaksa first gained the presidency he did so with a razor thin majority of 50.3% Although much has happened in the past few years to erode the checks and balances on power I am of the opinion that democracy, once given, is very hard to take away and Rajapaksa will face an uphill struggle to maintain his authoritarian regime once the country has recovered from the effects of war.