The Current Political Situation

Whatever else is to befall the unhappy nation on this pivotal day in Irish politics, it has to be hoped that An Taoiseach has kept his receipt for the five million or so Euro he spent on a Strategic Communications Unit. If they hadn’t ballsed-up the Thursday messaging, the government would not be on the edge of a precipice today.

The minutiae of who read what email when doesn’t matter in terms of the government's survival. Fianna Fáil have been watching the government, and the government watching Fianna Fáil, since the budget. Both know the end of the confidence-and-supply agreement is close; neither wants to be left being reactive to the other when the thing goes wallop and it’s time to face the people.

The latest McCabe revelations resulted in Sinn Féin tabling a motion of no confidence in the Tánaiste on Thursday of last week. This left Fianna Fáil in a dilemma; if they went against the Sinn Féin motion and something else broke about the state’s disgraceful treatment of Sergeant McCabe, Fianna Fáil lose ground to Sinn Féin.

Fianna Fáil cannot lose (further) ground to Sinn Féin because Sinn Féin will get a boost from a new face on the posters and from the fact that Sinn Féin represents the greatest potential change in the election anyway. Every electorate dreams of the far-away fields.

Therefore, Fianna Fáil had no option but to declare their own motion of no confidence in the Tánaiste. They missed a trick badly in not pulling the plug during the final days of Enda Kenny, when the disgraceful story about the breathalyser-fixing by the Gardaí broke. That would have been perfect, because the issue was so clear-cut and easily understandable. Fianna Fáil could not lose another opportunity.

In the light of this, the sensible play on Fine Gael’s part would have been to either keep schtum or else jettison Frances Fitzgerald with the greatest dispatch. You may say this would have been grossly unfair on Mrs Fitzgerald; reader, what’s fair got to do with it? This is politics, the dirtiest game there is.

Alan Shatter lost his job on the basis of political expediency. The noted moralists of the Labour Party defenestrated the Taoiseach that brokered the first ceasefire in Northern Ireland in a fit of political pique. Charlie Haughey, to echo Jeremy Thorpe’s famous quip about Harold MacMillan’s night of the long knives, laid down his friend for his life in 1990. That’s politics.

However. Fine Gael did not take this sensible option. Instead, Fine Gael went on the offensive, with Eoghan Murphy, a man without whom Leo Varadkar would not now be Taoiseach, delivered a studs-up performance in defence of Frances Fitzgerald’s honour on Prime Time last Thursday that bet the farm on Fianna Fáil backing down.

This was an extraordinarily naïve decision. All politicians like wriggle room, but Irish politicians need it most of all. Fine Gael’s public doubling-down on the Tánaiste means that any concession to Fianna Fáil looks like a climbdown. Sinn Féin had already closed off Fianna Fáil on one flank; Fine Gael’s outrage that anybody should look crossways at their Tánaiste left Fianna Fáil with no option but to light the fuse.

As Sarah Bardon of the Irish Times pointed out yesterday on Twitter, the messaging from the government has softened considerably since Thursday:

Language has changed over weekend. Simon Coveney was calling Fianna Fail reckless on Friday. Today he "accepts" their call for political accountability

— Sarah Bardon (@SarahBardon) November 27, 2017

And that’s all fine, but Fianna Fáil remain in a Grand-Old-Duke-of-York dilemma. All these things have to be understood in the context of the general election that will be fought early next year, if not before Christmas. How will Fianna Fáil’s argument of being responsible and putting the nation first stack up against Sinn Féin’s constant attack of Fianna Fáil being part of an elite that is willing to stoop to anything to keep itself in power, instead of doing the right thing in the name of that good man who was wronged, Maurice McCabe?

Politics is broad strokes. How do subtleties about changes to the Department of Justice work as broad strokes? Badly, is the answer. For Fianna Fáil, anything less than the Tánaiste’s head is a Sinn Féin win. In the light of this, Fine Gael’s only chance of limiting the damage would be for Frances Fitzgerald to do a Sidney Danton before marching bravely to the guillotine, and hope to be avenged in the election after Christmas. A cobbled-together compromise means an early Christmas for Sinn Féin HQ as their long march to power comes three to five seats nearer.

Due Process, and the Dogs in the Street

Whenever someone in authority in Ireland is under pressure for perceived wrong-doing, it is the done thing for whatever flack has been sent to RTÉ to defend him or her to insist that he or she is “entitled to due process, just like any other citizen.”

Where Aughrim is lost in so many of these things is that the interviewer invariably accepts this notion. But the interviewer should not. The interviewer should instruct the flack to hold it right there, and tell the flack that the creature in question isn’t entitled to “due process, like any other citizen,” because the creature in question isn’t any other citizen.

If the creature in question were any other citizen, we wouldn’t be talking about him or her on Morning Ireland or the Six-One News or whatever. We wouldn’t give a fiddle-dee-dee what was done, by who, to whom. It would be the very least of our concerns.

The reason we’re interested in the actions of public figures is because those public figures have a considerable impact on the life and well-being of the community as a whole, and because of this, public figures must be held to a higher account than private citizens. It’s a necessary stop against corruption, jobbery, cronyism and many other evils, and God knows such a notion never caught on around here at all, at all.

Reader, have you heard that “Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion?” It’s a two-thousand-year-old phrase that sums up the Romans’ attitude to people in public life. That not only must they themselves be models of probity, but those around them must be as well.

Contrast, this, then, with standards in Irish public life. For the past week, the media have been in a tailspin trying to chart who said what, to whom, and when, in regard to Garda whistleblowers and to what extent can we pin them on this. Because it’s only when pinned down that an Irish public figure will put his or her hands up and admit it’s a fair cop. Otherwise, the tradition is to say nothin’ and tough it out.

Those sagacious observers, the dogs in the street, couldn’t give an empty tin of Pedigree Chum who said what, to whom, and when. The doggies are convinced of the following facts:

• Maurice McCabe was ballaragged scandalously, and he was not, is not, nor will he be alone in that.
• The ballaragging didn’t happen by accident either. It’s not what you’d call an Act of God, like.
• The doggies don’t care how much the Garda Commissioner knew or didn’t know about it.
• The Mutt-ocracy do care that the current Garda Commissioner was brought in because of the scandal surrounding her predecessor and, rather than cleaning that up, she’s made it worse. Therefore, these debates about her stepping aside are pointless. She’s got to go. If she won’t resign, fire her and put someone else in charge, and keep firing people and appointing new ones until the screw-ups bloody stop.
• Katherine Zappone made a career from talking about children’s rights. How ironic, then, after a children’s referendum and the setting-up of a Ministry for Children, that the only thing Tusla seem to have done is played a part in a scandalous smear campaign. Goodbye, Katherine. Thanks for nothing.
• Frances Fitzgerald. What are you for, exactly, Frances? You’re for the door, that’s one thing we can settle straight away.
• Enoch Powell, that Wolverhampton wanderer and former UUP MP for South Down, once remarked that all political lives end in failure. Penny for your thoughts, Taoiseach.

As for an election not solving anything, whatever about the doggies, your correspondent is willing to give it a try, just in case it does solve something. Maybe, after the clown cabinet of the past year and the horror-show currently unfolding in the United States, the parties might be in a mood to behave in a vaguely grown-up fashion this time and present their plans like adults speaking to adults, rather than the usual rhetoric of orderlies in a mental home telling those fellows who think they’re Martians that the flying saucer will be here tomorrow to take them all back home.

As for our, the electorate’s, part, let’s all try to stop believing in flying saucers and get real while there’s still a country left to save.

An Garda Síochána, and the Corruption Inherent in Irish Public Life

There is none righteous; no, not one.

St Paul’s Letter to the Romans, Chapter 3, Verse 10.

Well, I’ve been down so very damn long

That it looks like up to me.

Jim Morrison, Down So Long.

Government Chief Whip Regina Doherty was a guest on Today with Seán O’Rourke on RTÉ Radio One on Friday, explaining why the Government was dragging its heels on the latest episode of the Garda Whistleblower controversy. “The revelation was only made on Monday,” said Deputy Doherty. “Today is Friday.”

It is Deputy Doherty’s job to appear on radio and explain that, had an Taoiseach doused her with petrol and set her alight just before she came on air, it was great to get warmed up, what with the winter drawing in and all. But sometimes, you have to come out with your hands up and say look, there’s a worm in the apple and that’s just how it is. We need a new apple. This one just isn’t any good.

The nature of the Gardaí’s internal disciplinary procedure has been in question for years. Years. And it’s not just the whistleblowers – there is also the genuinely extraordinary story of the tremendous balls made of the investigation into the murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier, and that happened over twenty years ago. What are these guys doing? Why are they getting away with it?

It is the done thing in functional democracies to hold people in power to a higher standard of probity than ordinary citizens. This is because great power brings great responsibility with it. The oldest example of that level of probity is Julius Caesar’s, who remarked that not only he, but his wife also, must both be above suspicion.

This is not how we roll in Ireland. In Ireland, access to power means that you are given a benefit of doubt that you by no means deserve, and a benefit of doubt that an ordinary citizen could not dream of. Nobody resigns in Ireland because they’ve done something wrong. In Ireland, a powerful person only loses his or her job when he or she is dragged kicking and screaming from it. Vide Alan Shatter, our previous minister for Justice, the nature of whose precise exit from government has never been made 100% clear.

And now he we have it repeating again. If the previous Garda Commissioner had to resign, the appointment of that previous Commissioner’s right-hand woman as the next Commissioner doesn’t exactly signal regime change. Nobody knows what’s going with these half-spoken allegations, but your correspondent is hardly alone in wanting them sorted out as soon as possible.

And what do get? Niall Collins of Fianna Fáil on Prime Time repeating “due process, due process” like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz saying there’s no place like home, each hoping to be magically taken over the rainbow.

And Deputy Collins, theoretically, isn’t even in Government. It is fashionable in Irish political commentary to describe chicanery as a particularly Fianna Fáil trait but if there is one thing our remarkably slow-witted nation should take from all this is that our political class are all the same.

Ireland’s political system is broken. It encourages us to vote for our lesser, rather than our better, angels, and continuous ramshackle government is our reward.

It is to Deputy Mick Wallace’s credit that he has been so dogged in pursuit of Garda malfeasance. If only Deputy Wallace were equally dogged in paying his taxes. Deputy Wallace’s stance on the current garda controversy does not excuse the nation for its lack of judgment in re-electing a tax dodger. He can’t do that. He has to set an example, and the pursuit of the whistleblower case doesn’t make tax-dodging excusable.

Ireland has to demand higher standards from our public representatives. My own opinion is that our proportional representation, single-transferable-vote electoral system and our libel laws that protect the strong at the expense of the weak have to be changed and even then, it will be a generation before any real change can be seen.

I pray to God to it happens but right now, looking at the contemporary Irish political scene, I might as well pray for the Irish rugby team to beat New Zealand in both Chicago and Dublin when they play at the end of the month. There’s a better chance of it happening.