A Battle A Day Keeps The Voters Away

As always, I struggle with a feeling that I’m somehow not entitled to stick my toe into the murky waters that comprises the political landscape in the six counties because I have no idea what the “sit-EE-ation” is really like up there.

Of course, that will never stop me chucking in my two cents’ worth anyway!

The Extremist parties have turned brinkmanship into an art form over the past few years while they have been in pseudo-power.

Now that the brink has been reached, what do the alternative parties have to offer? I tapped two sources – RTE’s pre-election Question and Answers programme and the homepages of the two “junior” northern parties.

From the SDLP, I see a new logo (they wisely switched from wimpy lower case letters to capitals), I see reaching to female voters by fielding a record number of women candidates, and I hear soundbites from Mark Durkan like “irony in politics is just hypocrisy with panache”. He is referring to the dramatic change in stance of the Extremist parties with a view to power sharing in recent years.

On the UUP side, I see reaching out to the communities which have no interest in partitionist politics. Their homepage has links to translations of their manifesto in-wait for it-Arabic, Chinese, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese and Urdu. I also see desperation when their deputy leader Danny Kennedy reminds their electoral base that : “(Thanks to us) the union is safe – (we look forward to) a partitionist government which will include (nationalists) too”.

In the north, the term “floating voter” applies to SDLP and UUP supporters who make up their mind on election day whether or not to set foot outside the door. I for one hope they do today.