Government Confidence Crisis

The first and most important idea of Breakthrough is to have a cabinet of experts. Before I venture to how this can be achieved and what would it involve I plan to explain for such a reform in our political scene. For explaining this reason, I plan to use this post today.
Before the Local and European elections a number of opinion polls was conducted to allow for a better approximation of the election results. Irish Times published a Red C poll which particularly struck me. The poll reflected that Fine Gael was far ahead at around 36%, Fianna Fail followed at 24% and Labour was third at 18% with Sinn Fein at 9% and Greens at 4%. The poll also showed the belief of the public for the leaders of the political parties. Leading was Eamon Gilmore with 51%, second was Edna Kenny with 33% and Brian Cowen followed with around 20%.
Now why I am putting forward results from an opinion poll that was conducted more than a month ago? Because this poll also showed one significant finding: the belief of public in the government was record low at 11%! Some attributed this finding to the fact that our government right now was deeply unpopular. However, working the numbers it is clear to see that Fianna Fail and the Green Party in this poll had 28%, which is significantly higher than the 10% confidence in the government. Even if we take into account the leadership of the party leaders and add Eamon Gilmore's and Edna Kenny's leadership points we get 84% opposition which still leaves 14% for the government!
It is not hard to figure out that the 10% does not only reflect the unpopularity of the government we have in power but also the disbelief among the public to the political system we have right now. This, however, is nothing that would be significantly different from the rest of Europe. When surveys are carried out the governments generally score low points in confidence from the people. In some countries even the fire brigade has more public confidence than the government. Therefore the question arises, where is the main source of problem?
In the Czech republic a recents survey has shown that 51% of people support the new government led by Jan Fischer. This government has been in power for only two months, so the findings may not truly reflect anything yet, but the government has already had to face with the problems of economic crisis, salvaging the Czech presidency of the EU and the massive floods. Thus we can deduce that the government has been put under considerable pressure already and take the 51% as a reasonable figure. In comparison the previous governments managed to score 20% at the peak of their popularity during the term in office. So why has Jan Fisher's government so much support? How is it different?
Firstly to answer the latter question. The government in the Czech republic is an government of experts. Each cabinet member is a person with proven track record in his/her field. Jan Fischer himself was a head of the Czech Central Statistic Office. The minister for foreign affairs, Jan Kohout, is a career diplomat, while the minster for finance, Eduard Janota was a minister of state in the ministry of finance for past number of years and I could go on. As you can see all the members of this cabinet are true experts in their field and that is the most significant difference between this cabinet and the previous ones.
However does this still explain the huge popularity? Yes! Not only people recognize that true experts are leading their country but also these experts take decisions that merit the Czech republic and its people, without thinking of political capital. The Czech presidency under Fischer's government was highly praised, the budget in making is set to be prudent to avoid extra borrowing and bringing the state to its knees in future, and the floods were quickly dealt with thanks for fast deployment of army and allowing money to pour into the regions as soon as possible.
This shows the great ability of a cabinet of expert to deal with situations without taking into account the political capital but rather making the correct choices based on their expert judgment. This kind of thinking is what we need, to get people's confidence in the government to rise, because this kind of thinking will benefit the country and the people as it did whenever and wherever it was applied.
Please come back to read tomorrow's post for more information on how this proposed system should work.