The election could be held within a month, analysts suggest.
Varadkar and Martin to meet amid election speculation – BBC.com
Some, nay many, may scoff at my using the BBC as a source for my post on Irish politics, but our mainstream media here is so complicit in the goings on at the very top that I feel it actually helps us to be reminded every so often in black and white terms.exactly how our government has been run for the past few years.
Why does Fine Gael need Fianna Fáil’s votes?
The results of the Irish general election in May 2016 failed to secure Fine Gael a majority government.
To form a government – a process which took more than two months – Fine Gael sought a confidence-and-supply agreement with opposition party Fianna Fáil.
Both parties are electoral rivals.
But the agreement has seen Fianna Fáil facilitate the passage of four budgets by the minority administration.
This agreement was extended in December 2018 for one more year, which ensured a general election could not be held before 2020.
Just to tack on my personal commentary, their so-called ‘confidence and supply’ arrangement took two months to thrash out because the result of the 2016 election posed a very real threat to the Civil War parties’ duopoly on Irish government. Either party could have formed a majority coalition were they able to persuade enough parties to go with them, yet as it turned out they could only do a deal with each other.
This to all intents and purposes is a coalition government, yet since they need the general public to believe they are mortal enemies as opposed to basically the same party, they conjured up this “confidence and supply” concept to prolong the illusion.
All of which results in the general assumption that Micheál Martin, despite being a prominent member of the blatantly corrupt Ahern/Cowen Celtic Tiger era, is effectively Taoiseach in waiting.
Unless all those keen to break the stranglehold of the “electoral rivals” on Irish government decide to show up on election day, that is. JLP
First Person Plural 