Opinion

Jarlath Kearney: This next decade should be about building functioning political institutions

Locked gates at Stormont in Belfast. Picture by Niall Carson/PA
Locked gates at Stormont in Belfast. Picture by Niall Carson/PA Locked gates at Stormont in Belfast. Picture by Niall Carson/PA

In five weeks we enter the 2020s. I’ve two columns left this decade. So I’m looking at aspects of the past 10 years and forward to 2030. This week, the public square. In a fortnight, the personal side.

There are many reasons why we don’t currently have a Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive. Some real. Some imagined. Some authentic. Some appalling. Some need addressed. Some need forgotten. Some need forgiven. Some need forbidden. Some still unwritten.

Discussions over recent years have understandably focused on actions and outcomes from the Stormont set-up: a system that’s remained underdeveloped for too long, not yet reaching the level to adequately deal with the bread and butter of normal politics.

But think about it. Formal education takes around 20 years, from pre-school to primary graduate degree. A key gap in public analysis has been to judge the early years culture of Stormont’s first real decade against the PhD university world of other long-established political institutions.

By late 2012, just five years into Stormont, negative narratives had already begun talking down the Assembly towards shutdown. But if public and political institutions are narrowly measured against the interests of only one single street or one single sector, does that always serve universal public service?

In every society, there is a wider philosophical and strategic argument for democratic, stable, functioning institutions through open and transparent representative democracy, and administered by an effective public service. That argument is increased - rather than diminished - where there are small but armed groups targeting public servants.

Look around the world today, like Washington’s robust Congressional Committee hearings. Many of the grave dangers of autocracy are only being addressed through functioning political institutions (yes, with their many flaws).

Without the Assembly and Executive, we’ve had no credible political leadership forum where poisonous discourse can be countered and challenged, where long-damaged relationships can slowly be mended or built.

The renewal of relationships in this society cannot simply be a rhetorical game or selfish agenda. First and foremost, better relationships are about individual choices. External social policies can frame the context. But only our internal leadership as individuals can deliver the outcome.

Politics is too often about vested interests trying to prove structural or ideological theories without a strategic understanding of their impact on ordinary individual lives or the interplay with our rapidly changing global environment.

Policy planning cannot be divorced from personal relationships that help us see the practical effects of our political choices on each other.

This is one of my big learning curves of the last decade: we haven’t worked hard enough at building relationships. Where sustained inequalities can be seen and understood, and therefore collectively targeted. Where deep-seated hurts can be heard and absorbed, and therefore compassionately addressed. Where generosities can be nurtured and exchanged, and therefore transformational.

Five years ago I began focusing on public service, away from politics. But it’s worth recalling that back in mid-2007, Martin McGuinness and Ian Paisley were working towards a draft Programme for Government (PfG). There was a blockage around equality language. I was policy advisor at that stage. A sift of many previous speeches from both leaders identified positive remarks on the need for equality and social reform. Some common ground flowed from finding some common language. The first and deputy first minister then agreed an equality dimension in the final PfG, including an equality impact assessment – even though the overall budgetary envelope was determined by Westminster. Baby steps on a long journey.

This place is so small that we’ll always operate under such external factors – pressures, budgets, regulations, interests - east/west or north/south. And influence is always better than absence.

In December 1999, the North South Ministerial Council and British Irish Council met for the first time - exactly 20 years ago. Lessons from the interim rollercoaster must surely be learned.

But by 2030 (whatever else is going on) we all deserve to be looking back on a full decade of mundane effectiveness from functioning political institutions under the Good Friday Agreement.