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Underscoring Our Culture of Unaccountability
Read more about: Bertiegate, Corruption
I thought I’d wrap up the coverage of Bertiegate here with a rather interesting item I stumbled across on the RTÉ news site earlier today: Swedish minister resigns over TV licence fee.
The Minister for Culture in Sweden has resigned after admitting not paying her television licence fee.
Cecilia Stego Chilo said she had not paid the licence fee of €160 a year for the past 16 years.
She also admitted not paying employer taxes when taking on a nanny.
The difference between what happened in that case and what happened with Bertie’s pretty stark. While I think resignation in both cases might be a bit to far, the big difference between Sweden and Ireland when it comes to the respective political cultures is that the former has a culture of accountability, whereas the latter does not.
Ms. Chilo, when asked, admitted her error plainly and clearly. Bertie, on the other hand, never did. The closest we got were some weasel words designed to sound like an apology, but really meant “I’m sorry all ye fools made such a fuss about this.” While Ms. Chilo was actually accountable and admitted to what she had done, which is the basis for accountability, we don’t even get or appear to deserve that.
The question is, what are we going to do to change this?
the whole area of accountability is quite fascinating. In the last fifteen years we have seen a raft of legislation which tightens up our system and brings it inline with international norms. SIPOC, spending limits, registration of interests and also the FOI act. This is married to reform of public administration and management lines in departments to make civil servants responsible alongside minsters if it is so necessary.
Yet these structural changes are quite detached from the body of ethics in our own political culture. For us accountability is adversarial. Its motivated by an opposition or (more often) media desire to ‘get’ the poltician in question thus the notion of resigning is tied up not with right or wrong but with winning and losing. Most irish people tend to forgive politicians in such circumstances, as i believe happended with Berties payments.
The accountability system in the Dail is pretty woeful though the committees have been strengthended slightly over the past years. WE are nowhere near a coherent body of ethical accountability across parliamentary and public bodies where joined up ethical standards are matched by joined up ethical investigations.
Very true. We have the laws in place, but legal structures do not create or change a culture. After all, laws will never be able to cover things which, while legal, innately feel wrong.
I think the adversarialness we find in the Dáil is one of the holdouts of the old Civil War mentality. This is especially strong in Fianna Fail, where there’s still the idea that they’re the underdog (like the Irregulars) and the rest of the country is out to get them, but Fine Gael has a dollop of it too. Bring into that an overly strong party whip system—we did, after all, invent it—and that you get ridiculously little actual debate in both houses, but instead we get prescripted speeches and a little time devoted to questions, and there’s no wonder things are the way they are. I think the way media react is just a reflection of this.
Which is well and fine, but a separate matter from accountability. After all, nobody (with the exception of Jim Higgins) was looking for him to resign, just to admit to what he had done and that, in hindsight, it appeared unseemly. And that’s accountability: when a question’s asked of you, you answer it honestly and in a straightforward manner, making no excuses. Resigning should only be one of the ultimate forms of censure, reserved solely for when holding on to ones position becomes untenable.
That, and we need a faster, less expensive alternative to the tribunals which, at the very least, gets solicitors and barristers out of the picture.
“While I think resignation in both cases might be a bit to far, the big difference between Sweden and Ireland when it comes to the respective political cultures is that the former has a culture of accountability, whereas the latter does not.”
I think it shows that in Ireland one party has been in power too long and thinks that no member of it’s party need ever resign no matter what is discovered about them whether it is something that happened in the past such as Bertie’s misconduct in taking money from “friends” while serving as a minister or obvious and clear inability to do the job such as Martin Cullen who has made dismal mistakes at all the ministeries he has held under Bertie, maybe it is the lack of judgement of the boss that should be looked at in continuing to appoint him and the buck should stop with him.
Oh sorry I forgot Fianna Fail ministers and leaders do not resign from office unless forced to by the other party in coalition with them. Michael, you failed your first and last test it was nice knowing you, not!
I would refer you to how long the Socialists were in power in Sweden: they put Fianna Fail to shame. If it were just that, it might be understandable, but it’s not.
“I would refer you to how long the Socialists were in power in Sweden: they put Fianna Fail to shame.”
The only shame is that Fianna Fail with it’s long history of corruption is still in power, the Swedish Socialist minister when exposed as not having not paid her television licence said sorry and resigned her post, when did a Fianna Fail minister or Taoiseach ever resign without being pushed from office by their smaller coalition partners and only then in a desperate desire by the rest of their Fianna Fail colleagues to keep their grubby greedy hands on the reins of power.
PS If only the wrong doing by Fianna Fail ministers in office had just been not paying their television licences.
I know I’m rehash a letter of mine from June about the statutory rape fubar but my last paragraph bears repeating (well, I think it does anyway)
“The basic fact remains that the system has failed because of a lack of due attention by those in high office to what was going on around them. If not one single person of significance loses their job over this, then we are being told as bluntly as you like that no matter what happens, no matter how big the screw-up, no matter how dire the consequences, no one in this Government will ever take responsibility for anything that goes wrong. - Yours, etc,”
Re Unaccountability: Lets hope that the new Privacy Bill doesn’t make it through the Dail. The Freedom of Information act has already been decimated.