“See how Italy beseeches God to send someone to save her from those barbarous cruelties and outrages; see how eager and willing the country is to follow a banner, if only someone will raise it.”
Nicolò Macchiavelli
“The Prince”
If you had watched the morning news on Canale 5, the only one of Silvio Berlusconi’s three national TV channels which could be described as vaguely fair, on the morning of April 13th as Italians were diligently taking their responsibilities as citizens seriously (over 80% of them voted), you would not have seen any statements from politicians. Strange, you might think, it was after all the day of a general election. This state of affairs is a result of Italian journalism laws, whereby no reporting of political statements, or release of opinion poll figures, is allowed while voting stations are open. These activities are also prohibited on the day before voting, in what is known as “una pausa di riflessione” or time to think.
Indeed you would not have seen any overt political comment, but what you would have seen was a parade of citizens, happy to talk to the camera about their views, aspirations and frustrations with the current state of the country.
There was the nurse, unhappy with how things were going badly in the health care system. Things have never been worse you know. There was the student, worried whether he would be able to get a job when he left university. You know how much uncertainty there is in the world today. There was the elderly couple, angry at how the purchasing power of their state pension had been eroded over the last couple of years. It’s all due to the euro of course. All of the people interviewed sincerely hoped that the future would hold better things for them and for their country at large. The new government, it was hoped, would turn things around.
The message was clear. The country was in dire straits and needed someone to get it back on its feet. The last government had clearly been incapable of sorting things out. It would be very wrong however to read the bulletin’s report as just crude pro-Berlusconi opinion formation (although it clearly was). It was also something more than that. Both of the main political parties here have tried to buy into the idea of new beginnings following the collapse of an unpopular government Italians only just about elected a mere two years ago. Indeed, it has seemed a long two years. People have forgotten that Berlusconi was in power right up until May 2006. He was in power a full eight months before the euro started to weigh down the pockets of Italians, theretofore used to banknotes as small as 1000lire (50 cent). The facts didn’t stand in the way of him launching an anti-euro campaign. The key was, of course, that Romano Prodi had been president of the European Commission, and Prime Minister in the 1990s. He had been there when the strict budget regulations member states had to adhere to were negotiated. Painting Prodi as Mr. Euro paid dividends for Berlusconi. By the time this unprecedented campaign by a party of government had got into full swing Prodi was, in the eyes of many Italians, responsible for the increased hardship they were facing every month. The term “sindrome della quarta settimana”, or 4th week syndrome, referring to the last 7 days of the month when all your money is spent and you are waiting impatiently for payday became common parlance. One poster belonging to Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party cried “PRODI: your euro equals our misery!”
Berlusconi also changed the electoral law in the run-up to the 2006 vote. The party which wins more votes on a national level gets a large number of bonus seats in the lower house of parliament, but the bonus seats in the Senate are distributed on a regional basis. This was a clear recipe for disaster given the climate in early 2006. There are some regions such as Sicily and the Veneto where the right always wins by a comfortable margin, and others such as Tuscany or Emilia-Romagna where the left is traditionally very strong. What this all means is that it is much more difficult to gain a working majority in the upper house. In fact the left only managed to gain control by counting some votes of small regional parties which, although allied with them, had not been part of their original coalition and with the support of senators elected by Italians abroad. Even so, on occasion Prodi’s government only survived confidence motions thanks to the votes of supposedly non-political lifetime senators (notably 99-year-old Nobel laureate Rita Levi Montalcini).
This parliamentary instability was the last thing Prodi, and the country he was trying to govern needed. The reality was that his government, if not stillborn, was on life support from day one. All of the political parties in the coalition realised that every vote in the parliament gave them incredible leverage. The government was unable to live up to its election promises such as legal rights for same-sex couples. It didn’t prove capable of reforming the incredibly wasteful public sector. It ran scared from the trade unions, seen by many as more interested in protecting privileges than protecting workers.
It did however launch a PR campaign to convince the public it was doing its best to combat Italy’s extremely high rate of tax evasion. Berlusconi was able to turn this to his advantage. Fanning the flames of public disquiet about high taxation for low returns, he convinced a large portion of the public the government was trying to get their hands on more and more of the honest hardworking individual’s pay packet. The bookish Minister for Finance, Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa declared taxes to be “beautiful things” and accused stay-at-home twenty- and thirty-somethings of being big Mammy’s boys, ignoring the fact that expensive accommodation and hard-to-find employment make this a necessity, rather than a choice, for many. In this way, supported neither by the left, nor the right, the government’s days were surely numbered.
A selective amnesty for prisoners in the country’s overcrowded prison system also came back to haunt the government, badly tarnishing its image. Despite the fact that Berlusconi’s own party had voted for it, seeing as it had originally been mooted by Pope John Paul II, it was a stick he could beat the left with. The government was portrayed as soft on crime, dishonest, and not having citizens’ best interests at heart.
High exchequer returns, due in no small part to increased revenue from higher fuel prices, as well as real results from the fight against tax evasion, meant that the government did manage to reduce the public debt somewhat. The people weren’t impressed. A higher tax burden and a general sense of political paralysis meant that it was only a matter of time before one of the parties made a bolt for the door.
It was the Catholic Udeur grouping and not the far-left who withdrew their support in the end, their leader and his wife under investigation by Naples magistrates for corruption in public appointments, (an investigation subsequently dropped).
“When a prince has the goodwill of the people he must not worry about conspiracies; but when the people are hostile and regard him with hatred he must go in fear of everything and everyone.”
So Prodi was gone, and what was to replace him? Another article is coming about that one!
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Monday, May 5, 2008
Enda Kenny: a sore winner
One man was not going to be graceful last week following Bertie Ahern’s resignation announcement. There was one man, among all the others, who was going to get his speak in and divil the backtracking or toning down given the day that was in it would he do.
That man was Enda Kenny.
First in his address to the public on the day of the Taoiseach’s announcement, and subsequently in his submissions to the Dail chamber, Kenny did himself, the Taoiseach, and his party, a great disservice by dispensing with decency and trying to score political points which would have automatically been his if he had only had the nous to wait.
Kenny looked hapless as he took to the steps of Leinster House to make his speech. His frontbenchers stood behind him trying their best, in all fairness to them, to hide their glee, but what they really did was make Kenny look like the weedy kid the teacher had picked to read the class prayer for peace in the world and bread for the hungry. Nobody sniggered or sneered in the background, which was good, but you felt that maybe they were all asking themselves how on Earth they had picked him as Taoiseach material as he proceeded to misjudge totally the mood of the day and land the blows anyway.
His somniferous tones at first made it seem like he was going to do the decent thing and just say adieu. The so long (sparring-)partner routine didn’t materialise however. He had clearly decided he was going to punch the falling man. Mr. Ahern’s “welcome” departure, he hoped, would see the end of the “soft option politics, indecisiveness and procrastination synonymous with the Ahern era.” It was all more Scrappy Doo than Marquis of Queensbury.
There was no ref to step in when Kenny pulled a knife. "I have to say that this decision was inevitable. The Taoiseach here has bowed to the inevitable, based on the weight of his own evidence at the tribunal.”
Take this, and this, and this……
It got even worse: "I believe that Bertie Ahern set standards and principles for others which he has not applied to himself until now. He set standards for Pádraig Flynn, for Charles Haughey, for Ray Burke, for Liam Lawlor. Had those principles and standards been applied in his own case, his resignation would have been much sooner.”
Tell us what you really think Enda.
“I regret to say that much of his good work over his years as Taoiseach and as minister will be overshadowed by yet another Fianna Fáil leader having to leave under these circumstances."
There you have it- “yet another Fianna Fail leader”. It has to hurt when the public continue to vote for the baddies time after time. Charlie and all his goings on. Albert and the Beef Tribunal. Fianna Fail 2 Fine Gael 0. Finally Fine Gael had managed to depose a Fianna Fail leader and it was a moment which had to be relished. Bertie wasn’t going to be allowed to go gently into that good nighty night.
Enda went on: "It is very regrettable that all Ministers in his Cabinet, and his junior partners, saw fit to defend the Taoiseach in the knowledge that the situation was not as it should be.”
Make him stop!
"All of the Ministers in the current Government and all of the Ministers in the junior partners have defended this Taoiseach on the basis of having done nothing wrong and of there being no lessening of the ability of Government to do its work. Clearly that has not been the case."
This really was the political equivalent of whipping out the lad and publicly pissing into Bertie’s open grave and it reflects very badly on Kenny. Obviously nobody had ever told him that the floorlings don’t like those who kick a man when he’s down.
If this misjudged bad taste wasn’t harmful enough for Kenny and Fine Gael, he actually went as far as to call for early elections. If anyone had actually missed the point of what he had been saying and merely interpreted it as blueshirt static- nothing more than annoying interference on a day Ahern had made his own- this was the proof that he was out of touch altogether.
Kenny, and Fine Gael, had won the argument. Ahern had gone. We all know that Bertie has a lot of explaining to do- if it isn’t corruption it’s most probably a tax non-compliance issue (Newspeak for evasion). Why oh why then was Kenny let look like a twit when all he had to do was wait and let the public get over the wave of sympathy and begin to coldly examine the facts.
Time will probably tell us that Kenny was right. But he should have known that time, and timing, are everything.
That man was Enda Kenny.
First in his address to the public on the day of the Taoiseach’s announcement, and subsequently in his submissions to the Dail chamber, Kenny did himself, the Taoiseach, and his party, a great disservice by dispensing with decency and trying to score political points which would have automatically been his if he had only had the nous to wait.
Kenny looked hapless as he took to the steps of Leinster House to make his speech. His frontbenchers stood behind him trying their best, in all fairness to them, to hide their glee, but what they really did was make Kenny look like the weedy kid the teacher had picked to read the class prayer for peace in the world and bread for the hungry. Nobody sniggered or sneered in the background, which was good, but you felt that maybe they were all asking themselves how on Earth they had picked him as Taoiseach material as he proceeded to misjudge totally the mood of the day and land the blows anyway.
His somniferous tones at first made it seem like he was going to do the decent thing and just say adieu. The so long (sparring-)partner routine didn’t materialise however. He had clearly decided he was going to punch the falling man. Mr. Ahern’s “welcome” departure, he hoped, would see the end of the “soft option politics, indecisiveness and procrastination synonymous with the Ahern era.” It was all more Scrappy Doo than Marquis of Queensbury.
There was no ref to step in when Kenny pulled a knife. "I have to say that this decision was inevitable. The Taoiseach here has bowed to the inevitable, based on the weight of his own evidence at the tribunal.”
Take this, and this, and this……
It got even worse: "I believe that Bertie Ahern set standards and principles for others which he has not applied to himself until now. He set standards for Pádraig Flynn, for Charles Haughey, for Ray Burke, for Liam Lawlor. Had those principles and standards been applied in his own case, his resignation would have been much sooner.”
Tell us what you really think Enda.
“I regret to say that much of his good work over his years as Taoiseach and as minister will be overshadowed by yet another Fianna Fáil leader having to leave under these circumstances."
There you have it- “yet another Fianna Fail leader”. It has to hurt when the public continue to vote for the baddies time after time. Charlie and all his goings on. Albert and the Beef Tribunal. Fianna Fail 2 Fine Gael 0. Finally Fine Gael had managed to depose a Fianna Fail leader and it was a moment which had to be relished. Bertie wasn’t going to be allowed to go gently into that good nighty night.
Enda went on: "It is very regrettable that all Ministers in his Cabinet, and his junior partners, saw fit to defend the Taoiseach in the knowledge that the situation was not as it should be.”
Make him stop!
"All of the Ministers in the current Government and all of the Ministers in the junior partners have defended this Taoiseach on the basis of having done nothing wrong and of there being no lessening of the ability of Government to do its work. Clearly that has not been the case."
This really was the political equivalent of whipping out the lad and publicly pissing into Bertie’s open grave and it reflects very badly on Kenny. Obviously nobody had ever told him that the floorlings don’t like those who kick a man when he’s down.
If this misjudged bad taste wasn’t harmful enough for Kenny and Fine Gael, he actually went as far as to call for early elections. If anyone had actually missed the point of what he had been saying and merely interpreted it as blueshirt static- nothing more than annoying interference on a day Ahern had made his own- this was the proof that he was out of touch altogether.
Kenny, and Fine Gael, had won the argument. Ahern had gone. We all know that Bertie has a lot of explaining to do- if it isn’t corruption it’s most probably a tax non-compliance issue (Newspeak for evasion). Why oh why then was Kenny let look like a twit when all he had to do was wait and let the public get over the wave of sympathy and begin to coldly examine the facts.
Time will probably tell us that Kenny was right. But he should have known that time, and timing, are everything.
Bye Bye Bertie (much too silly)
So I misjudged Bertie.
I underestimated him by a country mile.
If you read my last posting you’ll see I didn’t give him credit for the ability he has to read the situation better than anybody else. Just imagine Albert Reynolds or, Heaven help us, Charlie Haughey doing what he did.
In short, I was wrong.
He told us on Wednesday that he was stepping aside to save the body politic. What he was going through, he told us, was blatantly unfair, but he wasn’t going to let us suffer as well. He’d take the blows, the spears, the arrows but we didn’t have to worry about him. He was tough. He could take it. He would soon prove to us all that he was what we all want him to be, that is an honest decent down-to-earth self-sacrificing politician.
Only time will tell if all these adjectives will appear in the final biography but in the meantime let’s enjoy the media having been thrown into a confused frenzy of trying to justify the sometimes juiced up headlines and moralistic finger wagging we have seen over the last year or so.
The Irish Times didn’t know where to look. If you listen carefully you can actually hear Daniel McConnell clearing his throat and inserting the marbles before coming out with the following: “While as a constant critic of Mr Ahern his departure is, to me, welcome for the sake of Irish politics, there can be no denying that the manner in which he conducted his exit was steeped in a dignity sorely lacking in recent months.” Is that an insult cloaked in a compliment or a compliment cloaked in an insult?
The Irish Times’ God-deliver-us-all-from-dishonesty line began to look a bit shaky as soon as public opinion began to be heard though, and it became clear that Moore Street is infinitely more forgiving than D’Olier Street. Maybe it’s because we’ve been inoculated against corruption by years of tribunal revelations, or maybe we’re just bored with the whole thing, but quicker than an irate punter can dial the Liveline number, the sympathy waves came rolling in. I almost checked youtube to see if some poor tearful teen had posted a video asking us to “leave Bertie alone”.
The teenage girl’s name was Eoghan Harris.
Mr. Harris eruditely informed us that: “Last week Bertie Ahern gave the lie to Enoch Powell's aphorism about all political careers ending in failure.” So apparently, being forced to resign early is not really failure. “He did so by acting on Hegel's aphorism that freedom is the recognition of necessity.” Couldn’t you just see the wrinkles on our philosopher king’s forehead as he contemplated Hegelian aphorisms on the steps of government buildings last week? Yes, that’s what I thought.
Eoghan burbled on “instead of waiting for the inevitable push, Ahern jumped. With that one bound, our hero was free.” A hero indeed, and who are we to deflate a young boys hero? No mere hero of yestersong was Bertie however. The damsel (Grainne Carruth) had also been saved. “Heroes…… do not leave women in the lurch.”
Harris would do well to consider the mischievous role his newspaper, the Irish Independent, has played in all of this. It constantly landed tabloidesque kicks in the ribs with headlines based solely on “latest polls” showing the Taoiseach’s popularity limboing lower and lower under the bar of public opinion. It has rhetorically asked whether the Taoiseach would, or could, survive much longer. And so, we have now seen that this type of half-honest headline writing has, once again, become a sort of self fulfilling prophecy. Headlines reports pressure on public figure- headlines pour pressure on public figure. (Let’s stop this now shall we, before a silly chicken and egg respectively waddle and wall-fall disrespectfully into this conversation?)
I underestimated him by a country mile.
If you read my last posting you’ll see I didn’t give him credit for the ability he has to read the situation better than anybody else. Just imagine Albert Reynolds or, Heaven help us, Charlie Haughey doing what he did.
In short, I was wrong.
He told us on Wednesday that he was stepping aside to save the body politic. What he was going through, he told us, was blatantly unfair, but he wasn’t going to let us suffer as well. He’d take the blows, the spears, the arrows but we didn’t have to worry about him. He was tough. He could take it. He would soon prove to us all that he was what we all want him to be, that is an honest decent down-to-earth self-sacrificing politician.
Only time will tell if all these adjectives will appear in the final biography but in the meantime let’s enjoy the media having been thrown into a confused frenzy of trying to justify the sometimes juiced up headlines and moralistic finger wagging we have seen over the last year or so.
The Irish Times didn’t know where to look. If you listen carefully you can actually hear Daniel McConnell clearing his throat and inserting the marbles before coming out with the following: “While as a constant critic of Mr Ahern his departure is, to me, welcome for the sake of Irish politics, there can be no denying that the manner in which he conducted his exit was steeped in a dignity sorely lacking in recent months.” Is that an insult cloaked in a compliment or a compliment cloaked in an insult?
The Irish Times’ God-deliver-us-all-from-dishonesty line began to look a bit shaky as soon as public opinion began to be heard though, and it became clear that Moore Street is infinitely more forgiving than D’Olier Street. Maybe it’s because we’ve been inoculated against corruption by years of tribunal revelations, or maybe we’re just bored with the whole thing, but quicker than an irate punter can dial the Liveline number, the sympathy waves came rolling in. I almost checked youtube to see if some poor tearful teen had posted a video asking us to “leave Bertie alone”.
The teenage girl’s name was Eoghan Harris.
Mr. Harris eruditely informed us that: “Last week Bertie Ahern gave the lie to Enoch Powell's aphorism about all political careers ending in failure.” So apparently, being forced to resign early is not really failure. “He did so by acting on Hegel's aphorism that freedom is the recognition of necessity.” Couldn’t you just see the wrinkles on our philosopher king’s forehead as he contemplated Hegelian aphorisms on the steps of government buildings last week? Yes, that’s what I thought.
Eoghan burbled on “instead of waiting for the inevitable push, Ahern jumped. With that one bound, our hero was free.” A hero indeed, and who are we to deflate a young boys hero? No mere hero of yestersong was Bertie however. The damsel (Grainne Carruth) had also been saved. “Heroes…… do not leave women in the lurch.”
Harris would do well to consider the mischievous role his newspaper, the Irish Independent, has played in all of this. It constantly landed tabloidesque kicks in the ribs with headlines based solely on “latest polls” showing the Taoiseach’s popularity limboing lower and lower under the bar of public opinion. It has rhetorically asked whether the Taoiseach would, or could, survive much longer. And so, we have now seen that this type of half-honest headline writing has, once again, become a sort of self fulfilling prophecy. Headlines reports pressure on public figure- headlines pour pressure on public figure. (Let’s stop this now shall we, before a silly chicken and egg respectively waddle and wall-fall disrespectfully into this conversation?)
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Careerism more important than honesty
“No FF TD seems to have a problem with Bertie Ahern - a sad commentary on the state of Irish politics” wrote Stephen Collins in the Irish Times on Friday 21 March. In last week’s Sunday Business Post Vincent Browne also comments that none of what he calls Ireland’s political “practiced eyebrow raisers” have flinched at the implausible and oft-times corrected stories spun by the Taoiseach at the Mahon Tribunal.
Both journalists are right when they say that it takes just too much of a stretch of the imagination and a selective blocking out of human behavioural patterns to even begin to believe the Taoiseach. I mean, technically what Mr. Ahern says could be true, but then again in a constantly expanding universe, much much bigger than we can comprehend, there is a good probability that somewhere on a lonely asteroid sits a monkey currently playing all of Beethoven’s sonatas.
Collins rightly points out that il Duce himself, CJH, had, if not a plethora, at least a consistent number of critics within his own party. Why, asks Browne, has it taken until now for someone within the government to express “concern”? Even at that, it was Senator Fiona O’Malley looking for publicity in a PD leadership campaign for which no adjective is mediocre enough.
The difference between then and now, I believe, is succession. Haughey was never accepted by all of the Fianna Fail parliamentary party as an honest leader. Right from the start the malcontents were waiting for leadership wobble that would allow them to unseat Charlie. We aren’t even talking about big names such as Des O’Malley here. Hugh Leonard from my own constituency spent his entire political career on the cold cold backbenches having backed the wrong horse in the early 80s FF stakes. Even more importantly however, it was not very clear whom exactly Fianna Fail would choose as its next leader.
This time around it’s different. Everybody knows who will lead Fianna Fail into the next election. No member of the FF parliamentary party will dare speak out because they know it would probably spell the end of any ministerial hopes for as long as Brian Cowen is leader. And, yes, assuming of course that black is not proven to be white, nor the sea to be situated above the sky in the meantime, he will be leader.
John Gormley admitted after the last election that he was sick of being in opposition. This makes exactly the same point with regard to the Greens, PDs and independents whose attitudes are dictated by the same realpolitik. They know that if they are to be in power, deals must always be done, and more often than not, that deal is with Fianna Fail.
Bertie has anointed Cowen in a sort of Aznar-Rajoy relay which may well have the same result. In Spain, Aznar won two terms (as opposed to Bertie’s three) and announced that he would not be the Partido Popolar’s candidate for the premiership in the 2004 elections. Rajoy subsequently lost to Zapatero in a monumental blunder following the bombs at Atocha railway station. How they messed up the handover is history, but in Ireland, unlike in Spain, the lion’s share for the blame would probably fall on le dauphin, rather than his political daddy, if the little people revolted at the polls. If Cowen loses in 2012, or whenever, Bertie’s achievement of three consecutive wins will look even better. On the other hand, if Cowen wins, Bertie will not be without merit.
It is not a clear-cut win-win situation for the Taoiseach however. His authority is on the wane among the party faithful, even if just in hushed tones for the moment. Will he have the guts to quit early, go out all guns blazing, stepping down for the good of the country? The maxim that all political careers end in failure teaches us otherwise. Even if Ahern stood down in the morning, in what of course would be presented as a magnanimous gesture of heretofore unseen maturity, the doubts already exist in the back of the public mind. The damage, if you like, is done.
The real question now is whether the public care that their elected leader does not seem to be a paragon of probity, and it seems that they have more important business to see to. The point that the populace don’t care because the politicians are not publicly piling on the pressure can be made here and that brings us right back to where we started from: politicians’ reluctance to countenance a career-breaking statement.
There is no evidence to suggest that Cowen is so hungry for control that he and his men will start to elbow in around Ahern. Loyalty is always credible with the public, even in the most ridiculous of situations. A lack of loyalty might even cause Ahern loyalists to try and rain on his parade.
What all this means is that until there is obvious public anger, and blatant disquiet among Fianna Fail deputies or a radical step by the Taoiseach himself, nothing will change. Bertie will fight his corner and the country will chokingly lurch forward just at a time when it needs clear-minded and trusted leadership more than ever.
Both journalists are right when they say that it takes just too much of a stretch of the imagination and a selective blocking out of human behavioural patterns to even begin to believe the Taoiseach. I mean, technically what Mr. Ahern says could be true, but then again in a constantly expanding universe, much much bigger than we can comprehend, there is a good probability that somewhere on a lonely asteroid sits a monkey currently playing all of Beethoven’s sonatas.
Collins rightly points out that il Duce himself, CJH, had, if not a plethora, at least a consistent number of critics within his own party. Why, asks Browne, has it taken until now for someone within the government to express “concern”? Even at that, it was Senator Fiona O’Malley looking for publicity in a PD leadership campaign for which no adjective is mediocre enough.
The difference between then and now, I believe, is succession. Haughey was never accepted by all of the Fianna Fail parliamentary party as an honest leader. Right from the start the malcontents were waiting for leadership wobble that would allow them to unseat Charlie. We aren’t even talking about big names such as Des O’Malley here. Hugh Leonard from my own constituency spent his entire political career on the cold cold backbenches having backed the wrong horse in the early 80s FF stakes. Even more importantly however, it was not very clear whom exactly Fianna Fail would choose as its next leader.
This time around it’s different. Everybody knows who will lead Fianna Fail into the next election. No member of the FF parliamentary party will dare speak out because they know it would probably spell the end of any ministerial hopes for as long as Brian Cowen is leader. And, yes, assuming of course that black is not proven to be white, nor the sea to be situated above the sky in the meantime, he will be leader.
John Gormley admitted after the last election that he was sick of being in opposition. This makes exactly the same point with regard to the Greens, PDs and independents whose attitudes are dictated by the same realpolitik. They know that if they are to be in power, deals must always be done, and more often than not, that deal is with Fianna Fail.
Bertie has anointed Cowen in a sort of Aznar-Rajoy relay which may well have the same result. In Spain, Aznar won two terms (as opposed to Bertie’s three) and announced that he would not be the Partido Popolar’s candidate for the premiership in the 2004 elections. Rajoy subsequently lost to Zapatero in a monumental blunder following the bombs at Atocha railway station. How they messed up the handover is history, but in Ireland, unlike in Spain, the lion’s share for the blame would probably fall on le dauphin, rather than his political daddy, if the little people revolted at the polls. If Cowen loses in 2012, or whenever, Bertie’s achievement of three consecutive wins will look even better. On the other hand, if Cowen wins, Bertie will not be without merit.
It is not a clear-cut win-win situation for the Taoiseach however. His authority is on the wane among the party faithful, even if just in hushed tones for the moment. Will he have the guts to quit early, go out all guns blazing, stepping down for the good of the country? The maxim that all political careers end in failure teaches us otherwise. Even if Ahern stood down in the morning, in what of course would be presented as a magnanimous gesture of heretofore unseen maturity, the doubts already exist in the back of the public mind. The damage, if you like, is done.
The real question now is whether the public care that their elected leader does not seem to be a paragon of probity, and it seems that they have more important business to see to. The point that the populace don’t care because the politicians are not publicly piling on the pressure can be made here and that brings us right back to where we started from: politicians’ reluctance to countenance a career-breaking statement.
There is no evidence to suggest that Cowen is so hungry for control that he and his men will start to elbow in around Ahern. Loyalty is always credible with the public, even in the most ridiculous of situations. A lack of loyalty might even cause Ahern loyalists to try and rain on his parade.
What all this means is that until there is obvious public anger, and blatant disquiet among Fianna Fail deputies or a radical step by the Taoiseach himself, nothing will change. Bertie will fight his corner and the country will chokingly lurch forward just at a time when it needs clear-minded and trusted leadership more than ever.
Rite and Reason
This is a letter of mine published in the Irish Times on 11 December 1997 in response to an article by Monsignor Denis Faul in which he denounced non-Catholic education. I found the article to be offensive and based on very shaky arguments. My religious views have changed since then but here is the piece as published.
Secularism And Religion
A chara, - I read with surprise the article by Mgr Denis Faul (Rite and Reason, December 1st), in which he claims that "even paganism is preferable to secularism." Does he not realise that secularism does not mean rejection of religion, but rather a separation of Church and State - two distinct spheres of human activity?
Mgr Faul's opening parable, in which he somehow tries to equate pride with secularism, using a litany of bizarre and unrelated statements, is meaningless. In suggesting that secularism is synonomous with hedonism, the glorifying of greed and personal pleasure, he will have offended all Catholic parents who have chosen a secular education for their children, along with all parents of different religious traditions.
Perhaps it would have been more productive to examine why some parents, despite having had a Catholic education themselves, choose a different form of instruction for their offspring. In many cases I am sure the answer lies in the hypocrisy, and sometimes abuse, that many of that generation experienced at the hands of religious who instilled fear and timidity rather than virtue and courage in their pupils.
Mgr Faul's article is typical of the arrogance found in some of the Roman Catholic clergy - an arrogance that permits a member of another Christian denomination to share in the sacrifice of the Eucharist in a Catholic church but denies the right of a Catholic to reciprocate. Obviously we all believe our religious beliefs to be correct, but Mgr Faul could do worse than read the writings of Nicholas Cusanus, a Catholic bishop and theologian, who, despite living during the polarised days of the Reformation, recognised that truth can exist in diversity.
Mgr Faul states that Catholic students "rejoice in the truth, in the sure and certain teachings of the Church, of Pope John Paul II." Firstly, I wonder what proportion of students that Catholic schools are turning out today have an understanding of these teachings, never mind rejoice in them. Secondly, if Papal teachings are to be accepted as truth for ever, how can one account for the many immoral and misguided Popes that have existed down through the centuries or the fact that the doctrine of Papal infallibility was pronounced only relatively recently in the Church's history?
Being a Christian means reading the Bible in order to follow the example of Jesus, the Son of God, in our everyday lives: it does not mean accepting without discussion the doctrines of a Hierarchy shrouded in mystery and intrigue. The problems that face the Catholic Church today stem from the fact that it no longer has a docile and superstitious congregation, ready to accept dogma proclaimed in an ancient language they do not understand.
I do not intend this letter to be a mere short-sighted condemnation of the Catholic Church. I am not a so-called "Church-basher". In fact, I believe organised religion to be a force for good in the world. I myself was educated in a Catholic school and that education has served me well. What I am saying, however, is that if the Catholic Church wants to continue to influence society, it must reconsider some of its attitudes and actions in order to appear more relevant to the lay community. It must realise that the days of praying with your back to the congregation are gone for good.-Is mise, Paul McPhillips,
Maghernaharney, Rockcorry, Co Monaghan.
Secularism And Religion
A chara, - I read with surprise the article by Mgr Denis Faul (Rite and Reason, December 1st), in which he claims that "even paganism is preferable to secularism." Does he not realise that secularism does not mean rejection of religion, but rather a separation of Church and State - two distinct spheres of human activity?
Mgr Faul's opening parable, in which he somehow tries to equate pride with secularism, using a litany of bizarre and unrelated statements, is meaningless. In suggesting that secularism is synonomous with hedonism, the glorifying of greed and personal pleasure, he will have offended all Catholic parents who have chosen a secular education for their children, along with all parents of different religious traditions.
Perhaps it would have been more productive to examine why some parents, despite having had a Catholic education themselves, choose a different form of instruction for their offspring. In many cases I am sure the answer lies in the hypocrisy, and sometimes abuse, that many of that generation experienced at the hands of religious who instilled fear and timidity rather than virtue and courage in their pupils.
Mgr Faul's article is typical of the arrogance found in some of the Roman Catholic clergy - an arrogance that permits a member of another Christian denomination to share in the sacrifice of the Eucharist in a Catholic church but denies the right of a Catholic to reciprocate. Obviously we all believe our religious beliefs to be correct, but Mgr Faul could do worse than read the writings of Nicholas Cusanus, a Catholic bishop and theologian, who, despite living during the polarised days of the Reformation, recognised that truth can exist in diversity.
Mgr Faul states that Catholic students "rejoice in the truth, in the sure and certain teachings of the Church, of Pope John Paul II." Firstly, I wonder what proportion of students that Catholic schools are turning out today have an understanding of these teachings, never mind rejoice in them. Secondly, if Papal teachings are to be accepted as truth for ever, how can one account for the many immoral and misguided Popes that have existed down through the centuries or the fact that the doctrine of Papal infallibility was pronounced only relatively recently in the Church's history?
Being a Christian means reading the Bible in order to follow the example of Jesus, the Son of God, in our everyday lives: it does not mean accepting without discussion the doctrines of a Hierarchy shrouded in mystery and intrigue. The problems that face the Catholic Church today stem from the fact that it no longer has a docile and superstitious congregation, ready to accept dogma proclaimed in an ancient language they do not understand.
I do not intend this letter to be a mere short-sighted condemnation of the Catholic Church. I am not a so-called "Church-basher". In fact, I believe organised religion to be a force for good in the world. I myself was educated in a Catholic school and that education has served me well. What I am saying, however, is that if the Catholic Church wants to continue to influence society, it must reconsider some of its attitudes and actions in order to appear more relevant to the lay community. It must realise that the days of praying with your back to the congregation are gone for good.-Is mise, Paul McPhillips,
Maghernaharney, Rockcorry, Co Monaghan.
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