Soap Box
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I would be more than delighted to answer any questions you may have regarding the Glenties Constituency. Your soap box awaits! Post your comments here and I will get back to you as soon as I can.
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Thank you
Padraig Doherty
Dear Padraig Doherty,
At a social occasion on Tuesday night in Sligo my friend Rachel and I found ourselves in a lively ‘discussion’ with a diverse group of people from many counties in Ireland who were probing a few of your supporters about the nationwide possibilities/potential of how from the fringes of the remotest county your anti-whip policy might successfully be harnessed and replicated throughout the entirety of the nation, now perceived to be convulsing and regressing in direct consequence of those despised party-whip policies reigning supreme in ALL constituencies.
Your supporters claimed that the narrow border that the entire county of Donegal shared with the rest of the Republic was the reason that the Dublin-based party-whip politics could never work for their forgotten and isolated county still patiently waiting wild-west-style for the railroad to come through, and that furthermore the full dispersal of the plenitude of power in your entire constituency could only be manifested through the medium of that whip-free people-power franchise that is becoming associated with your name and campaign.
Your friends seem to think that the potential of an whip-free vote will unleash a hitherto unknown force for progress in the North-West in that it encourages participation of those who in consequence of the thraldom and limitations of party-voting have NEVER voted before.
Your supporters claimed that because of such party-whip considerations, successive government parties in refusing to grasp the nettle of Donegal have their advocates being confronted on the doorstep by once loyal party followers now come to realize the absolute futility of thinking that such party-politics could do any justice to the uniqueness of their own isolated county.
They claim that the uniqueness of their geography and their greater border with Northern Ireland is a wonderful opportunity to invest in the political currencies of the Good Friday Agreement by compensating this most disenfranchised county of western Europe with the option of a dual citizenship that would at once facilitate a joint Irish/British ownership/access to the natural resources around Rockall island, all for the greater economic good of the entire Donegal hinterland.
In answer to a question from me as to whether or not party voting might still work in other less remote and less
disenfranchised counties I was astonished to hear D.M. (the Brandy and Baileys drinker) remark that while once other such constituencies might have found it profitable to play the parties off against each other that now even that is no longer helpful in view of what she claimed was John Pilger’s assertion in his ‘The New rulers of the World’ that democracy itself is reduced to electoral ritual, ie competition between indistinguishable parties for the management of a single-ideology state.
She further claims that while the Tourist Board might consider Donegal as some sort of Paradise Lost, your party-free constituents have the power to ensure that that Paradise of Donegal is made better known.
Your friends are certainly very clear about the need for the Donegal electorate to heal themselves from the obsession of useless party-loyalties.
As the night dragged on I came to think about how anomalous it was that this groundswell of intent unleashed by your campaign must be a sort of a theophany in a teacup since apart from D.M. and her friends no where have I, Rachel or any of our friends heard these ideas associated with your name.
My question to you is how can this be? In fact are you for real at all or did we through the haze of value for money alcohol meet some futurists who star-trek like came back in time to document Ireland’s casting off the harness of that party politics that might have had a meaning in the days of old when turkeys chewed tobacco and yes and no were exact opposites?
If you are for real and if these views imputed to you are indeed yours then whether party lemmings or not ANY voter in your constituency claiming to be of sound mind and not vote for you as either their First or Second choice, could be considered to have committed an act of grave consequence bordering on the reckless.
D.M. claims that you can even speak the ancient gaelic tongue!
Yarona Coen
Even though we are in the US we support all that you do. Most importantly we support your stance on immigration in the US, you stand behind those who have been working and paying taxes for years. Those who left your constituency! You have always brought strength locally and we support you as the peoples choice. Best of luck from across the pond!
Comhghairdeas