Ivana Bacik. A Failed Political Entity?

Johnny Marr wrote: »

Burton has been involved in her constuency, at local or national level, for 20 years.

Bacik has been involved in Dun Laoghaire for two months.

If she ever wants to be elected (which I know you would not want), then she'd have to go through the local elections and parish duties.

Well that's certainly a big factor too. If she really wants to get elected, she needs to pick a constituency and stick to it. Voters and local party workers alike would be entitled to view with suspicion someone like Bacik who has switched constituencies three times in three years.

gizmo555 wrote: »

The problem is not Bacik's personality, it's her extreme feminism.

It's certainly a major issue, but I would hardly point to it being the only one.

To begin with, as has been pointed out, Dun Laoghaire is not the first constituency she was associated with; she ran, unsuccessfully, for Dublin Central in a by-election in 2009 and the following year she sought, unsuccessfully, to get the Labour nomination to run for Dublin South East - that's three constituencies in as many years that she has sought to attach herself to.

Added to this there are her various attempts to enter the Seanad in 1997 (lost), 2002 (lost) and 2007 (elected) and a run for the European Parliament in 2004 (lost).

To an average Dun Laoghaire this would look like someone who is simply a career politician, not really interested in the consistency she is supposed to be representing, but instead simply using it as an unpleasant, but necessary, requirement to get into office.

Boyd-Barret, by contrast, for all his nutty, Trotskyist views, has been active in Dun Laoghaire for years. Most local people would have seen him demonstrating at one stage or another, read of his efforts to stop a family in Loughlinstown from eviction and so on. Bacik's political history with Dun Laoghaire appears to have begun with her party's nomination.

Another factor that has alienated her from many voters is a perceived sense of intellectual arrogance. This can lead to a feeling by many, often less educated, voters that she has little in common with them or even believes herself to be superior to them.

Michael McDowell suffered from this; it doesn't matter whether he did believe himself to be superior to the electorate or not, only that people perceived this and thus it undoubtedly contributed to his failure to get re-elected (twice) and the ultimate collapse of the PD's. Bacik suffers from this same perception, I believe.

And then, of course, there is her particular brand of political ideology, which is perceived to be radical feminist to the point of misandary. And in fairness, it is difficult to get away from that image, because if nothing else she's been consistency biased in her vision of gender equality, in a style that was more popular when she was Student Union president in Trinity - it's actually difficult to find any policy that she has even passively, let alone actively, supported policies that do not blatantly work to the determent of men and for the benefit of women.

One quick example of why she is perceived as a 'femnazi' from the Seanad:

Senator Ivana Bacik: This prison seems to be forging ahead without anyone questioning whether we need these places. I was going to use the “L” word but I hesitate to use it, other Members of the House having fallen into problems, so I will say that misinformation rather than lies have been told about the need for more prison places in this country. The reality elsewhere shows us that if one builds bigger prisons, judges and sentences will fill them with people. This is the sad reality and we need to reappraise whether we need this many prisons, especially for women.

This week, we are fortunate to receive a visit from Baroness Jean Corston from the British House of Lords who produced a very radical report last year on women in prison and who recommended, after a very thorough review, that prison places for women should essentially be abolished and that there should just be a small number of small detention units for women. Otherwise, alternative sanctions should be used. We could very much learn from the lessons of that report.

I am happy to say that Baroness Corston will be visiting Leinster House on Thursday. Deputy Mary O’Rourke and I are hosting a meeting with her for all women Members of the Oireachtas. I am sorry that we cannot invite any male colleagues interested in this issue to the briefing with Baroness Corston.

Senator David Norris: Why not?

Senator Ivana Bacik: I would be happy to meet them to discuss the issues at another time.

(Source: 20 May 2008, page 817)

Now, how can one claim to support gender equality and then support a meeting that specifically bars one of the genders? It is difficult to conclude anything other than she ultimately represents the interests of only one gender over the other at best. And given that such stories of her ideological biases have inevitably disseminated to the great unwashed masses and half of the electorate are men, I can see her having lost the votes of many who simply did not see her as representing them - or even acting against them.

Which brings us back to the titular question of whether she is a failed political entity? And the answer is that there is no such thing as a failed political entity, only a political entity who costs too much to elect.

Labour could, and likely will, continue to find her a home in the Dail and eventually, with a bit of luck and a lot of campaign funds, probably succeed. However, they are probably better off putting their eggs in more 'electable' baskets at this stage, because if you cannot get elected for Labour in the party leader's constituency and in the present political climate, and if you've never managed to get elected to anything other than TCD Students Union (then forced to resign) and the Seanad, despite repeated attempts, then you're probably not cut out for politics.

Gender quotas in politics - or anything else. One reason I'm delighted IB didn't make it. If you're good/smart enough, then go for it, don't look for some type of handicap to be placed around other peoples necks.

T runner wrote: »

The problem is that many women (ans men) are good enough and smart enough but our society puts handcaps around their necks.

Quotas just balance things out. If you think a woman isnt good enough then dont vote for her. You still have taht choice. So the parties who put up token woman will lose out. Hardly discrimination.

You do ofcourse realise that a quota alraedy exists in Irish politics. (geographical quota).

Anyone who compalins that a quota system sould be used to help alter teh fact that our female representation is closer to Turkeys (4%) than to Swedens or that 90% of part time workers are female, over 90% of land and wealth owned by males. 99% of primary carers in houses with only one primary carer are female.

Youa re silent about all tehse handicaps for women. But attempt to force parties to change their parish pump policies to alter the trend and youwcry Discrimination.

Irish men need to start getting honest and real. Start being fair to their fellow female citizens, to the children of thsi country.

We Irish men have been complaining about gombeen polirtics for the last several weeks.

Could doing nothing about the appalling levels of gender inequality in this country and complaining when any initiative to redress teh balance might be perceived in any way as discriminatory, not be perceived as a gombeen philosophy.

Why is this country so weak? Because its men with their selective self righteousness and de facto mysogonist culture are weak.

Utter nonsense. It's a personal decision to run for elected office, nothing more than that. People make sacrifices for a lot of things in their lives, running for elected office is no different.

panda100 wrote: »

I have been to many talks on parenting in Ireland where Bacik has spoken and she has always been very much in favour of equal rights for fathers.

Where? To the best of my knowledge she has shown support for paternity leave, but that's about it - certainly nothing that would negatively affect womens' present monopoly of rights where it comes to children.

Indeed, she's been quite hostile to those campaigning for father's rights in the past.

If I am wrong, please link to evidence of the contrary please.

In their article, Dr Gail McElroy and Professor Michael Marsh, examine the issue in the context of the Republic of Ireland where the electoral environment offers significant choice to the electorate in terms of both opportunities to vote for women and the party affiliations of female candidates. The multi-member nature of the constituencies should provide electorates with considerable flexibility in electing women. In particular, the single transferable vote (STV) in multi-member constituencies, gives an unusual degree of freedom to the voter to choose between candidates, both within and across political parties. Despite this flexibility, Ireland still has a very poor record of women’s representation in the Dáil by international standards.

In their analysis, the authors examined the opportunities for a gender based vote in the 2002 general election. They examined the aggregate evidence using original detailed variables about the background characteristics and election expenditure of all the candidates running in districts (incumbency, prior office holding, ministerial experience etc). This allowed them to examine whether certain candidates were disadvantaged by their gender, in general, in Ireland. Secondly, they examined patterns of voting behaviour from one of three districts (Dublin West) that used electronic voting from 2002. The data was used to examine the apparent importance of candidate gender as a voting cue. Thirdly, they examined survey data from the first ever Irish National Election Study to see if there was any evidence to suggest women tended to prefer female candidates and, if so, what sort of women and what sort of candidates.

On the basis of this extensive analysis the authors found that gender did not play a important role in candidate success or voter decision making in Ireland. Women candidates didn’t do significantly worse than male candidates in the aggregate. Nor did women seem to be discriminated against in terms of ballot order and rank in the analysis of the electronic data. The analysis of the individual-level data demonstrated that women didn’t seem to get votes disproportionately from female voters.

Commenting on the significance of the findings, authors, Dr McElroy and Professor Marsh said: “While none of the tests can be said to prove conclusively that gender is completely irrelevant in Irish elections, the article does test a rich variety of ways in which one could assent to female candidacy and we remain confident that if we have to look this hard to find any evidence of gender bias or effect in the Irish case, it cannot play a very significant role in voting behaviour.”

“In terms of an insight into the reasons for the continued underrepresentation of women in the Dáil, these figures do hint at supply side issues. It may be the case that increasing women’s political representation will depend on whether political parties have a strategic incentive to promote women.”

https://www.tcd.ie/Communications/news/pressreleases/pressRelease.php?headerID=1701&pressReleaseArchive=2011

This might be interesting to non-feminazis who will no doubt dismiss it immediately as it's conclusion isn't "DA MAN IS KEEPING US DOWN".

I dislike Bacik and lost the last vestiges of respect I had for her when she went on a leave of absence to contest the GE rather than resign her post.