Slips ‘twixt cups and lips…

Two great quotes come to mind regarding the O’Dea debacle.

  • “It’s not the crime that kills you, it’s the cover-up.” RM Nixon.
  • “They are too busy trying to keep their jobs to have time to do their jobs.” A Sorkin

None of this episode reflects well on any class of politician in Ireland.

Why would someone of Willie O’Dea’s stature and achievement feel the need to stoop so low, in a council election when he wasn’t even running? Why would such a seasoned professional bother to lie in an affidavit rather than swallow his pride and make, yet another, ‘mea culpa’?

Why would Brian Cowen and Pat Carey, who both witnessed Albert Reynolds’ slip-up, bounce a fragile coalition into a ‘vote of confidence’ in a still evolving situation?

Why would the Greens go along with the bounce? Surely, waiting until the normal course of event was the sensible, independent thing to do. Even if they had to go along, why get up and make speeches that they clearly didn’t believe even as the words were being read out. Surely, turning up and voting would have been sufficient?

Why would Dan Boyle tweet and run away, like a child playing ‘dickie doorbells’? An interesting initiative from a previously initiative-free zone?

(I did hear one theory that Cowen got Gormley to order it. Gormley thought he was getting a ‘scalp’ – all he was doing  was taking the dagger out of Cowen’s hand. The FF’ers will blame the Greens for this, not Cowen or Carey or O’Dea’s incompetence…..Cowen wriggle off the hook, again.)

Cowen is now so used to twisting the truth that he can’t get the facts straight about whether Willie was sacked or resigned. (Still, trying not to take responsibility – and this is meant to be ‘tough leadership for tough times….’?

It took the opposition months to see the ball sitting on the goal-line waiting for a ‘tap’ in. And it took a British managed paper to have the gumption to print the story in way it needed saying despite local and national papers having had the story just as plainly.

And in all this incompetent dribbling, NAMA is falling apart and Brussels is making an expensive set of bank nationalizations inevitable.

PS The ‘scheme’ is ready for hatching once I get a quiet news cycle – could be waiting some time, though.

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