This day week, (June 4) the electorate of West Tyrone will join constituencies throughout the North in electing three MEPs. There are seven candidates representing a range of interests but the electorate on this occasion may well be the most partisan that any of the candidates will have faced before.
Many people have lost their jobs, their homes, their savings, and their prospects: add to these traumas the fact that many in the political classes in the UK, have been shown to be greedy and wasteful and you have a recipe for disillusionment.
However, voters here should be careful to distinguish the candidates in Northern Ireland from those MPs in the UK .
So far, none of the candidates here for the European seats have been tainted and therefore they must be judged on how they have performed and how, given the chance, they will perform.
It is expected that people will largely vote upon the traditional lines that have divided our single community here into nationalists and unionists - but perhaps now, in the era of the new dispensation, the issues themselves should determine who takes and does not take a seat in Europe. But does anyone know what the issues are? Europe often appears so remote that only talk of farm subsidies seems to resonate locally. It may be the case that, in the European Parliament, the concerns of small communities and individuals are simply lost - the challenge therefore, for all of the candidates is to ensure that, if successful, they could make a difference. That they could amplify the needs of communities that have been over looked by government departments at Stormont or Westminster.
The talk over this last year has been of the 'credit crunch' and the bail-out of the banks - will any of the candidates be able to turn this 'crisis' into an opportunity, to help bring about a new arrangement in which the lives of real people are protected from the whims of massive and impersonal economic institutions?
Voting is an expression of your faith in democracy - if you don't vote three MEPs will be elected anyway - at least you can help determine who they will be.
