The proponents of the notion that Ireland is a failed state have gone a bit quiet in recent times as the absurdity of their claims and the hollowness of their alleged solutions have been rumbled by the electorate.
Using thorny problems such as housing to suggest that the State is fundamentally flawed had become the default position of a range of government critics, particularly Sinn Féin. If the results of the recent local and European elections are anything to go by, most voters have seen through such exaggerated rhetoric.
The rigging of the election result in Venezuela almost two week ago is an example of what can happen when the citizens of a democratic state are seduced by populist promises. The first phase leads inevitably to economic failure and the final one is the overthrow of democracy itself.
The irony is that the political forces who tried, and failed, to convince the Irish electorate that they live in a failed state are the very ones who hailed the current Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his immediate predecessor, Hugo Chávez, as beacons of progress.
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In 2019 two senior members of Sinn Féin, Conor Murphy and party general secretary Dawn Doyle, attended the inauguration of Maduro, despite the fact that it was widely accepted that he had stolen the election. Mary Lou McDonald defended the decision to attend the ceremony on the basis that many people in Ireland might not accept the legitimacy of the then taoiseach, Leo Varadkar.
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Last week’s election fraud in Venezuela was even more blatant than in 2019, and it is widely accepted that Maduro lost by a landslide. He nonetheless claimed victory and set the army and the police force loose on those who are trying to uphold democratic standards.
Sinn Féin’s fondness for Maduro and Chávez may not have impinged greatly on public opinion here but it deserves to be highlighted as it illustrates the direction in which the party is capable of taking this country, by accident or design, if it ever gets its hands on the levers of power.
There certainly was serious inequality in oil-rich Venezuela when Chávez was first elected in 1999, and his focus on eliminating poverty was admirable. The problem is that the way he went about it destroyed the country’s economy and left it in a far, far worse state than he found it.
A number of left-wing politicians in Ireland, ranging from Michael D Higgins to Sinn Féin, hailed the election breakthrough by Chávez as marking a positive step for the then wealthy South American country. What happened next is a salutary lesson that has direct relevance for Ireland.
Back in 1991 when the United Nations Development Index, which measures the standard of living across the globe, was initiated, Ireland was ranked in 23rd place and Venezuela in 43rd. Since then Ireland has moved up to seventh in the most recent index, level with Germany and ahead of the UK and most EU countries.
That is something for which successive governments, officials and State agencies deserve enormous credit. They devised policies, not always popular, which have brought the country to an unprecedented level of prosperity. It is why so many people from other parts of the world want to come here.
Even previously sympathetic neighbouring countries with left-wing governments have demanded proof of Maduro’s alleged victory
By contrast Venezuela has dropped steadily down the global rankings and now stands at 119 in the UN index. The economy, which was already in free fall under Chávez, collapsed during Maduro’s first term. Gross domestic product has declined by 75 per cent and hyperinflation hit an incredible 130,000 per cent at one stage.
The economic disaster prompted a humanitarian crisis that has led to about eight million people out of a population of more than 30 million fleeing the country and generating a refugee crisis in neighbouring states.
This is the background to the recent general election, which Maduro lost by a landslide to the main opposition candidate, retired diplomat Edmundo González. Maduro ignored the results and brazenly claimed a victory, which one expert described as “the largest electoral fraud in Latin America’s history”.
The electoral process was plagued by irregularities, according to the Venezuelan NGO Transparencia Electoral. The list ranges from blocking the initial opposition leader, María Corina Machado, from running at all. She was then replaced by González and, during the campaign, opposition members were arrested and international observers prevented from monitoring the vote.
The United States and the EU have refused to accept the legitimacy of the result, and even previously sympathetic neighbouring countries with left-wing governments have demanded proof of Maduro’s alleged victory. However, he has the backing of the army and it is clear that he has no intention of relinquishing power.
The moral of the story is that Irish voters need to cast a cold eye on the political promises of those who were cheerleaders for Maduro and Chavez. What happened to the once wealthy Venezuela could so easily happen here if the levers of power are put into the hands of those committed to extravagant policies that fly in the face of mundane economic reality.