Editorial – The focus is now local

THEâ€Ë†FOCUS is slowly narrowing. For the last few weeks we have been gazing at a wide screen on which a range of characters flitted on and off in a bewildering range of guises. Government Ministers morphed overnight into backbenchers; a Taoiseach and apparently immovable leader exchanged his dual role for one; a coalition partner joined the Opposition, but won't really oppose.[private] So now we know we will soon have an election, but sooner than planned. That national poll is for the moment overshadowed by a far more restricted one, with a franchise of fewer than 80. Once Fianna Fáil select their new leader, the face that will grace their posters for good or ill, then the election race will be on for real. This is when our focus tightens to the purely local. Our form of democracy dictates thus. Each voting citizen must choose his or her preferred representatives to represent an area, not the country. It might be better if we could combine this local vote with a list system, by which parties would also select non-constituency candidates whose loyalties would be national rather than parochial. For the moment we have the system we all grew up with. Parliamentary Reform is a concept that is often aired in debate, but never seriously presented at election time. It should be, and if things continue to be as tough for the citizens as they are now, the next election could see a radical reform party emerge. Our duty in this newspaper is to deal with the here and now. We will do our best to give fair coverage to all the candidates in our circulation area. We cannot guarantee to publish all the material submitted, but we will endeavour that our readers are sufficiently informed on the choices open to them in deciding who will represent the common good in the next Dáil.[/private]