“Some things I cannot change, but till I try, I’ll never know.”
It was only in November 2008, the morning after the US presidential election, that it properly and more clearly than before struck me that I was gay. Though I had engaged in low-level lobbying within the Progressive Democrats approaching the 2007 election on the lack of progress on a promised civil unions bill, it was partly on secular grounds because of my objection to the consultation between Michael McDowell, as Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, with Roman Catholic bishops in drafting legislation relating to gay people, and partly on the urging of my then girlfriend. And it was only after Proposition 8 in California was defeated that I paid much attention to it.
It was a few days later, on 8 November, I regretfully spoke and voted in favour of a motion to disband the Progressive Democrats, something that seemed a possibility from the results of the 2007 election on.
So in looking for a new party, I was more conscious than before of parties’ attitudes to gay rights. The release of Milk early 2009 was a reminder of the value of political activism and how being honest and open can change assumptions and perception, being the story of Harvey Milk, who was one of the first openly gay people elected to public office, and who helped defeat Proposition 6, which would have barred gay teachers.
Yet I joined Fine Gael because it is the party closest to me on the role of the state in spending and economic governance. This did not mean that my deeply held liberal principles were set aside. I remembered what the late Dr Garret FitzGerald said, “You don’t join a political party because you agree with them. That always struck me as a rather static view. You join a party because you can change it. It’s a more dynamic view of politics.” And he did change assumptions not just within Fine Gael, but in the country as a whole, and remains a political inspiration for me.
In December 2009, I went to Leinster House on the first day of the debate on the Civil Partnership and Certain Rights and Obligations of Cohabitants Bill. The first response was from Charlie Flanagan, who as Fine Gael Spokesperson on Justice, Equality and Law Reform gave an outstanding speech, the best of the evening, in which he stepped beyond party policy, “while many welcome it, others believe it does not go far enough. To those people I would say that change is incremental and I hope that full equality is not far away”, and went on to remind us what secularism has done for society
It was then with a measure of hope that in July 2010, I proposed a motion at Young Fine Gael Summer School (where motions are consultative) with Trinity YFG to support allowing gay couples to marry. But this was very narrowly defeated, with a mere two votes in it. Of course I was disheartened, but I realized that I hadn’t given the time to something that to me seemed so obvious. And a rephrasing of what Milk said in the clip above formulated in my mind: a young gay centre-right political activist who all of a sudden realizes that they are gay; there are two options, move to Labour, or stay in Fine Gael and fight.
So I stayed on, was elected to the National Executive in November, and appointed Director of Policy. Many friends of mine outside the party found my involvement difficult to understand. I did feel that too often people did accentuate the negative, and assume a focus on social matters far greater than existed. The election result of last year was a time of hope and political renewal.
At the Summer School in July 2011, I proposed the same motion for Dublin South-East again at summer school, with Meadhbh. That time it got near universal support. It almost made me glad two people who would have voted for it the year before had turned up late.
Then this Saturday, on my last full day on the National Executive, a motion at Young Fine Gael Conference (where motions are binding as policy), proposed by Úna and Noel for DCU YFG, calling on the government to bring forward legislation allowing gay couples to adopt, was similarly passed with near universal support.
I am proud to have been an active part of the organization during this rapid change on this issue of personal importance to me. I was taken aback and very appreciative of the response to my comment on Facebook on this.
Indeed, the shift in public opinion here and in other countries in the last few short years has been remarkable. This has been both reflected and advanced by popular culture, and cheesy though it may seem, it was the words of this song, as performed by Chris Colfer, as Kurt in Glee, that went through my head before Summer School last year, “Some things I cannot change, but till I try, I’ll never know.”:
Gender quotas for 2014
Tomorrow morning, Young Fine Gael will debate a motion on gender quotas, which I will be speaking in favour of,
YFG calls on the Minster for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government to impose the 30% gender quota as outlined in the Electoral (Amendment) Political Funding Bill 2011 on the 2014 Local and European Elections.
Quotas would not be proposed in the ideal world, as they do set a restriction on the process of election for TDs. It is a blunt instrument that does not address the wider reasons that there is such a low proportion of women in the Dáil. These include provision of childcare and sitting hours, as well as the wider political culture which Minister Lucinda Creighton recently described as “toxic”. But it will be very likely be the thing to kickstart the changes required that would not happen otherwise.
The question for us should not be why there are fewer women than men in elected politics in Ireland; the same is true in all but two countries worldwide, Rwanda and Andorra. The question is why there are proportionally fewer than in most other EU countries, where we rank 23rd of 27 countries, with Cyprus, Romania, Hungary and Malta behind us. Quotas recognize a need to address an historic imbalance, and are used in different forms in 100 countries worldwide.
Wherever one stands on the issue, quotas are now the law, and will be in place for the next general election, due by February 2016. Parties will lose half of their allocation of state funding if either male or female candidates comprise less than 30% of their total candidates. The quota is at the point of ballot access, not of election. This will improve the current situation where those who would like the option of voting for a woman of their own party is greatly diminished: in 2011, in four constituencies there were no women candidates; the three main political parties fielded at least one male candidate each in 36 constituencies (84% of all constituencies) while the same three fielded at least one female candidate each in just two constituencies (5%), Dún Laoghaire and Longford–Westmeath.
Parties are going to have to adjust to the new system and work out how to ensure a balance across the country. Most candidates for the Dáil come through the county council system. While I would hope that being compelled to think of ways to bring new people into the system might encourage parties to look at a broader range of entry routes, looking to local business, policy expertise and community involvement, most will continue to come from local government. In order to facilitate a smoother selection process ahead of the general election, and to emphasise the importance of offering a choice of women candidates across the electoral system, it only makes sense to amend the legislation to bring the change forward to the 2014 local and European elections.
Romney and Paul, 2008 and 2012
I was wrong in my assumption that states that voted for Mitt Romney in 2008 would be likely to vote for him again this year. At the outset of the primary and caucus season, I had thought that with wins in all states bar South Carolina, the race could finish up even before Super Tuesday on 6 March. However, his positioning in the race relative to the other candidates is different; where in 2008, he was a conservative to the right of perceived moderate frontrunner John McCain, this year he is the one perceived as the moderate frontrunner. So it eventually emerged that Romney had lost very narrowly in Iowa to socially conservative former Senator Rick Santorum, and lost night lost in Missouri, Minnesota and Colorado, putting the current score at 4–3–1, to Santorum–Romney–Gingrich.
So between the two candidates who also contested in 2008, here’s how they compared:
| State | Paul | Romney | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2008 | 2012 | +/− | 2008 | 2012 | +/− | |
| Iowa | 9.9% | 21.4% | +11.5% | 25.2% | 24.5% | −0.7% |
| New Hampshire | 7.8% | 22.9% | +15.1% | 31.6% | 39.3% | +7.7% |
| South Carolina | 3.6% | 13.0% | +9.4% | 15.3% | 27.9% | +12.6% |
| Florida | 3.2% | 7.0% | +3.8% | 31.0% | 46.4% | +15.4% |
| Nevada | 13.7% | 18.7% | +5% | 51.1% | 50.0% | −1.1% |
| Colorado | 8.4% | 11.8% | +3.4% | 60.1% | 34.9% | −25.2% |
| Minnesota | 15.7% | 27.2% | +11.5% | 41.4% | 16.9% | −24.5% |
| Missouri | 4.5% | 12.2% | +7.7% | 29.3% | 25.3% | −4% |
There is at best then quite an imperfect correlation between these candidates’ support between the two years. Perhaps the biggest difference for Romney is the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, modelled in part on the health care plan implemented by Mitt Romney while Governor of Massachusetts.
The victories yesterday did not allocate convention delegates, but were yet an indicator of Mitt Romney’s waning fortune in his position as frontrunner. He’s still most likely to be the nominee, but it will take longer to establish this than I presumed at the start of the year.
Are the victories by Rick Santorum an indication that cultural issues are playing a bigger role in Republican voters’ minds? Some recent events may shift their minds to such issue, between the Ninth Circuit ruling invalidating Proposition 8 in California (which I obviously welcome), and the mandate requiring all employers, including religious organizations, to provide contraceptive services (which I would be less enthusiastic about). While these issues may make Romney feel required to have a clearly conservative running mate, but I can’t see it gaining the party many votes this year.
Unusual ruling on marriage in California
Discrimination in marriage in California has been ruled unconstitutional yet again. In June 2008, the California Supreme Court ruled in favour of equal marriage. This was overturned by an amendment to the California Supreme Court, Proposition 8, passed November 2008. Those couples had married in that period could stay married, but no further gay couples could marry. The ruling on the high-profile case, Perry v. Schwarzenegger (now Perry v. Brown), in August 2010 in the US Federal District of Northern California overturned Prop 8, as violating both the equal treatment and due process clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. It was immediately appealed, and its effect stayed pending the ruling on the appeal in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The appeal was announced today, confirming that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional.
So once again all couples can wed in California (constitutionally at least, I’m not sure if the decision has been given a stay on appeal). But on what grounds? The three court judge ruled by 2–1 that because Proposition 8 left gay couples with all the equivalent rights and responsibilities of marriage through domestic partnership, but without the word marriage, there was no rational basis presented by the proponents for the distinction (summary here, full ruling, which I’ve yet to even scan through here).
The decision appeals to the logic of Romer v. Evans, a 1996 ruling of the Supreme Court of the United States, authored by Justice Anthony Kennedy, which overturned an amendment to the Colorado constitution forbidding anti-discrimination laws protecting gay and lesbian citizens. As Justice Kennedy is seen as the swing vote, this is seen to make it likely to upheld again if it comes before the Supreme Court.
But whatever of the political reality of it, there’s a strange logic that follows. If Proposition 8 had deprived gay couples of any aspect of marriage other than the name, of if California had not had decent domestic partnership, then the case for equality would have failed today in California. To give an analogy, let’s say these isles were US States. It would rule a ban on equal marriage in the United Kingdom as unconstitutional, but one in Ireland as constitutional. That’s because in the United Kingdom civil partnership is practically identical in legal terms to marriage, so there’s no reason not to grant the name, whereas here in Ireland there are several differences between the two. So is there an incentive for those who want to maintain a distinction in the words to leave out some token measure of rights that pertain to marriage too?
We’ll see what effect this has on the election. Republican front-runner Mitt Romney has already criticised the decision of “Today, unelected judges cast [who] aside the will of the people of California who voted to protect traditional marriage”. Will he be forced into making this a campaign issue? I really doubt there’s much political capital for him there if he does. And for President Barack Obama, the ruling is neatly in line with his stated view in 2008, that while not in favour of a general right of gay couples to marry, he did oppose Proposition 8 in California.
Defending Glee
I had a letter published in this month’s issue of Gay Community News,
Dear Editor,
In his assertion that Glee perpetuates a stereotype, Dylan (Letters, Issue 265) betrays a prejudice of his own, in his case against effeminate gay men. Perhaps it’s time for a new awareness slogan, “Some gay men like musicals – get over it”. For someone who seems to be a keen viewer of Glee, Dylan ignored the fact that Kurt was passed over for the male lead in West Side Story by his boyfriend, Blaine. He also ignores how Kurt’s father in that episode encourages him to be himself, not to conform to the perception of what a real man is, and to assert his true self, “What is wrong with any of that? It’s who you are. I say, if they’re not writing movies and plays for performers like you, then you’ve got to start writing your own. C’mon man, you’re awesome. Write your own history.”
Glee portrays diversity between its gay, lesbian and bisexual characters, between Kurt, the more butch Blaine, the closeted bully Karofsky, Santana now coming out and Brittany almost oblivious to why others care if she’s with a boy or a girl.
Dylan and others should also remember why the older stereotype arose. In the past, those like Blaine or Karofsky found it easy to pass for straight, while someone like Kurt, who even another gay man describes as prancing, couldn’t help but stand out.
But it was because of their presence that the public at large couldn’t pretend that gay people didn’t exist.
Now that full legal equality is within sight, it would a remaining social injustice if we were to continue the claim that effeminate men are not real men.
Yours,
William Quill
Could they not have let Thatcher be Thatcher?
The Iron Lady was not without some great moments, but it is disappointing that this film will probably mean that a figure as a monumental in British politics as Thatcher will not get the cinematic treatment she merits for some years to come again. Sure, it’s up to the director, Phyllidia Lloyd to portray her subject as she wishes, to choose the focus of her film, but it was certainly not the film I’d been hoping for. 
Spoilers below
Romney before Super Tuesday
States that support a candidate in one nomination cycle tend to support them again four years later, especially if the candidate is in a stronger position the second time around. On this alone, Mitt Romney should be expected to be more likely than not to win in Michigan (where his father was governor), Nevada, Wyoming, Maine, Massachusetts (his home state), Montana, Utah, Minnesota, Colorado, North Dakota and Alaska. I may have missed a particular reason he won’t win a particular one of these again (while Huntsman would probably win in Utah if it were an early primary, it’s unlikely to factor in at all, scheduled for June).
With this and current polling trends in mind, Mitt Romney should fare quite well in the primary and caucuses before Super Tuesday on 6 March:
- 3 January – Iowa: Romney polling ahead
- 10 January – New Hampshire: Romney polling ahead
- 21 January – South Carolina: Gingrich polling ahead
- 31 January – Florida: Romney marginally ahead in latest poll; predicting him rather than Gingrich, polling second, assuming Gingrich loses steam after poor IA and NH finishes
- 4 February – Nevada: Romney, based on 2008
- 7 February – Colorado: Romney, based on 2008
- 7 February – Minnesota: Romney, based on 2008; even if it is Bachmann’s home state, she’s faring very poorly
- 11 February – Maine: Romney, based on 2008
- 28 February – Michigan: Romney, based on 2008
- 28 February – Arizona: no lead
- 3 March – Washington: no lead
quite comfortably
This is unscientific, so if you have better clues on any of these, let me know. And I don’t mean to suggest either that he would lock out any contenders before 6 March, even if he wins all these, as he could win them only marginally, with rivals taking plenty of delegates from these contests too. And there are ten contests on Super Tuesday that could change things a lot. But if he wins both Iowa and New Hampshire, he will be the first Republican since Ronald Reagan in 1980 to do so. Not a bad start at all so.
Edit: But Romney is only marginally ahead in the Iowa polls. If Rick Santorum or Ron Paul win, I’d still see most of the above panning out the same, except with Romney in a weaker position against Gingrich in Florida.
The choice for Iowa and beyond
Were I a resident of Iowa, I would caucus tomorrow for Jon Huntsman (and I could do so without having been a long-term registered Republican). I would like to able to have a genuine choice for between the two main party candidates in November’s election, and Huntsman is the only Republican who I can now envisage myself supporting. Even if I were to support President Barack Obama for re-election, I think he would be better served by debating Huntsman than any of the other candidates. Such a debate would be the one most likely to be fought on issues of substance.
Jon Huntsman served as ambassador to Singapore from 1992 to 1993, worked in business till he was appointed Deputy United States Trade Representative in 2001 by President Bush, and in this role helped bring the Republic of China (Taiwan) and the People’s Republic of China into the WTO. He served as governor of Utah from 2005 to 2009, and as Ambassador to China from 2009 to 2011, appointed by President Obama. Through these positions, he has an understanding of international relations, and the role the US plays, already more developed than most presidential candidates, in this season or in past years. He showed patriotism by accepting an ambassadorial position under this current Democratic administration, when it would have been better for his prospects in the Republican primaries to have continued as governor.
Though very much the most moderate of the Republican candidates, he is a fiscal hawk. In 2008, the Cato Institute, a libertarian think-tank, ranked Huntsman in fifth place among governors on fiscal policy, on level with Republicans Rick Perry of Texas and Jim Gibbons of Nevada. His economic and taxation policy is focused on reducing corporate welfare and other tax expenditures. Yet in August, he was the only one of the Republican candidates to approve of the deal between the president and the House on the debt ceiling, calling it “a positive step toward cutting our nation’s crippling debt.”
GOP’s second place last time rule
In 1976, Ronald Reagan challenged President Gerald Ford for the Republican Party nomination, winning 23 states to Ford’s 27. Then in 1980, Reagan was the nominee.
In 1980, George H. W. Bush won 6 states, with Ronald Reagan winning the remaining 44. Bush was selected as Reagan’s Vice President, and after Reagan’s two terms was the nominee in 1988.
In 1988, Bob Dole won 5 states and Pat Robertson won 4 states, with Vice President Bush winning the remaining 41 states. Bush was elected president, contesting again in 1992. In 1996, Bob Dole was the nominee.
The pattern doesn’t hold between 1996 and 2000. Bob Dole win 44 states, Bat Buchanan won 4, and Steve Forbes won 2, whereas George W. Bush was the nominee in 2000.
In 2000, John McCain won 7 states to Bush’s 43. Bush was elected president, contesting again in 2004. Then in 2008, McCain was the nominee.
In 2008, Mitt Romney won 11 states, Mike Huckabee won 7, with McCain winning the remaining 31. Now Romney looks the most likely to win this year’s nomination, though it is by no means secure for him.
Ron Paul and the racist, homophobic newsletters
Ron Paul looks set to win the Iowa Caucus on 3 January, ahead in the polls and Nate Silver currently his chances of success at 52%. There are positives that could be gleaned from such an outcome; if an antiwar candidate who has consistently opposes the increasing encroachments on personal freedom particularly since 2001 were to win even a single state among Republican activists, it would give the leadership of both parties cause to reconsider their policy decisions in these areas. Infringements on rights supposedly enshrined in the Fourth Amendment (security of property from search without warrant) and the Fifth Amendment (fair trial) have continued under President Barack Obama, and he should be challenged in a national debate on these issues. You can be damn sure that if John McCain had been elected and was seeking a second term, Democratic-leaning bloggers and posters would have made a big deal about this as a reason not to campaign against him. The same could be said in praise of Paul’s commitment to end the futile war on drugs. Quite generally, I do have libertarian sympathies on issues across the political spectrum.
But Congressman Ron Paul is not a candidate I could endorse for either the presidency or even, as Andrew Sullivan did last week, for the Republican nomination. In that endorsement, Sullivan refers somewhat obliquely to serious mark on Paul’s character with a single line, “He has had associations in the past that are creepy when not downright ugly”. This is something that deserves much more notice than this, and it is to Sullivan’s discredit that he did so little to address it.
In an article in The New Republic earlier this year, ‘A Libertarian’s Lament: Why Ron Paul Is an Embarrassment to the Creed’, Will Wilkinson recounts how Paul should fail to satisfy a libertarian, such as on issues such as immigration. (My favourite line in the piece is one that refers to Rick Santorum, “In 2006, I tossed a few dollars at the Democrat running for Senate against the loathsome Rick Santorum. It could have been a three-headed goat, for all I cared, but Wikipedia says it was Bob Casey.”) Most importantly in a judgement of character, in my view, is the reference to racist material published under his name in a regular newsletter.
This received coverage during the 2008 campaign, but at a time when Paul’s polling was considerably lower than this year. As he has become a contender, it has rightly reemerged.
It is widely believed that these newsletters were mainly written by Lew Rockwell, chief of staff to Paul from 1978 to 1982, and in 1982 founded of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, an organization which has a worrying interest in the Confederacy. The contents of these newsletters, have been scanned online and can be read with controversial elements highlighted. These are rife with attacks on black and gay people, and include tacit support for David Duke, a renowned racist politician.
This was reported by James Kirchick in The New Republic, a liberal, Democratic-leaning magazine in their issue of 8 January, 2008.
Paul issued a statement on this that day, which given my criticism of him, I should quote in full:
The quotations in The New Republic article are not mine and do not represent what I believe or have ever believed. I have never uttered such words and denounce such small-minded thoughts.
In fact, I have always agreed with Martin Luther King, Jr. that we should only be concerned with the content of a person’s character, not the color of their skin. As I stated on the floor of the U.S. House on April 20, 1999: ‘I rise in great respect for the courage and high ideals of Rosa Parks who stood steadfastly for the rights of individuals against unjust laws and oppressive governmental policies.’
This story is old news and has been rehashed for over a decade. It’s once again being resurrected for obvious political reasons on the day of the New Hampshire primary.
When I was out of Congress and practicing medicine full-time, a newsletter was published under my name that I did not edit. Several writers contributed to the product. For over a decade, I have publically taken moral responsibility for not paying closer attention to what went out under my name.
This was followed by articles in Reason, a libertarian magazine, by Matt Welch on 11 January and by Julian Sanchez and David Weigel in their issue of 16 January. This is perhaps most revealing, with the political thinking behind the content of the newsletters,
During the period when the most incendiary items appeared—roughly 1989 to 1994—Rockwell and the prominent libertarian theorist Murray Rothbard championed an open strategy of exploiting racial and class resentment to build a coalition with populist “paleoconservatives,” producing a flurry of articles and manifestos whose racially charged talking points and vocabulary mirrored the controversial Paul newsletters recently unearthed by The New Republic.
David Boaz, vice president of the libertarian Cato Insitute, issued a statement explaining their silence to date on the Paul campaign. They were treated by some supporters of Paul as heretics, and accused of libertarian infighting. Julian Sanchez responded to a lot of these fringe criticisms in detail.
In the second round of the controversy, four years later, Ta-Nehisi Coates, a senior editor of The Atlantic has put the case against Paul well and succinctly,
The standard defense has generally been Paul didn’t write the newsletters. I think an honest reckoning with that defense would have someone question the faculties of an adult who would allow a newsletter filled–by Paul’s own admission–with bigotry to be published under one’s name. Had I spent a decade stewarding an eponymous publication steeped in homophobia and anti-Semitism, I would not expect my friends and colleagues to accept an “I didn’t write it”excuse.
I think it is credible, indeed likely, that Ron Paul did not write the offensive material himself. It would not be at all unusual in the political world that the political writing of a representative would be penned by their staff or outsourced further, particularly in the case of a journal which he had given his name to, rather than one coming from his office. But it is inconceivable that for years on end, Paul had no idea what was being published under his name. He was willing to allow ignorant fears of black people and crime and of gay men through the AIDS epidemic to be used to build political support. This is surely grounds for considering him unworthy of support during this primary season.
Clinton on women’s rights
Coming more than 36 hours later, I’m not going to claim to present Hillary Rodham Clinton’s speech on Tuesday on LGBT rights as news. It was a great speech though, and well worth watching if you’ve only read the text.
The important message from her speech is that she is not talking about any special rights for gay people, as Governor Rick Perry so wilfully misunderstands.
As Clinton says,
Some have suggested that gay rights and human rights are separate and distinct; but, in fact, they are one and the same. Now, of course, 60 years ago, the governments that drafted and passed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights were not thinking about how it applied to the LGBT community. They also weren’t thinking about how it applied to indigenous people or children or people with disabilities or other marginalized groups. Yet in the past 60 years, we have come to recognize that members of these groups are entitled to the full measure of dignity and rights, because, like all people, they share a common humanity.
This recognition did not occur all at once. It evolved over time. And as it did, we understood that we were honoring rights that people always had, rather than creating new or special rights for them. Like being a woman, like being a racial, religious, tribal, or ethnic minority, being LGBT does not make you less human. And that is why gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights.
It is wrong to make legal distinctions, prohibitions against lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender people because no one should be subject to any special exception from human rights. It is not about creating exceptions, but ending them. Culture and religion can be no excuse for an infringement on human rights.
As I posted on Facebook, she didn’t start being great on Tuesday. This speech consciously mirrors her speech in Beijing at the Fourth World Conference on Women. This is a speech should be read again now by all those inspired by her speech on Tuesday,
It is time for us to say here in Beijing, and for the world to hear, that it is no longer acceptable to discuss women’s rights as separate from human rights.
These abuses have continued because, for too long, the history of women has been a history of silence. Even today, there are those who are trying to silence our words. But the voices of this conference and of the women at Huairou must be heard loudly and clearly:
It is a violation of human rights when babies are denied food, or drowned, or suffocated, or their spines broken, simply because they are born girls.
It is a violation of human rights when women and girls are sold into the slavery of prostitution for human greed — and the kinds of reasons that are used to justify this practice should no longer be tolerated.
It is a violation of human rights when women are doused with gasoline, set on fire, and burned to death because their marriage dowries are deemed too small.
It is a violation of human rights when individual women are raped in their own communities and when thousands of women are subjected to rape as a tactic or prize of war.
It is a violation of human rights when a leading cause of death worldwide among women ages 14 to 44 is the violence they are subjected to in their own homes by their own relatives.
It is a violation of human rights when young girls are brutalized by the painful and degrading practice of genital mutilation.
It is a violation of human rights when women are denied the right to plan their own families, and that includes being forced to have abortions or being sterilized against their will.
If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, let it be that human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights once and for all. Let us not forget that among those rights are the right to speak freely — and the right to be heard.
The problems she refers to are unfortunately as alive today as they were 16 years ago, and we must continue to scrutinize our approaches to human rights issues around the world to ensure that we do not place the right to life and personal autonomy of any individual on a lower scale for any reason.
Presidential election votes
This table lists all votes won in Irish presidential elections in order of absolute numbers. Of course this order ignores issues such as growth in the electorate and variance in turnout. But an interesting table, if just because it shows that the highest and lowest poll both came from this year’s election.
| Candidate | Year | Vote | % |
| Michael D. Higgins (Lab) | 2011 | 701101 | 39.6 |
|
Brian Lenihan (FF) |
1990 |
694484 |
44.1 |
| Mary Robinson (Lab) | 1990 | 612265 | 38.9 |
|
Erskine Childers (FF) |
1973 |
635867 |
51.9 |
| Tom O’Higgins (FG) | 1973 | 587771 | 48.1 |
|
Mary McAleese (FF) |
1997 |
574424 |
45.2 |
|
Éamon de Valera (FF) |
1966 |
558861 |
50.5 |
|
Tom O’Higgins (FG) |
1966 |
548144 |
49.5 |
|
Éamon de Valera (FF) |
1959 |
538003 |
56.3 |
|
Seán T. O’Kelly (FF) |
1945 |
537965 |
49.5 |
| Sean Gallagher (Ind) | 2011 | 504964 | 28.5 |
| Seán Mac Eoin (FG) | 1959 | 417536 | 43.7 |
| Mary Banotti (FG) | 1997 | 372002 | 29.3 |
| Seán Mac Eoin (FG) | 1945 | 335539 | 30.9 |
| Austin Currie (FG) | 1990 | 267902 | 17.0 |
| Martin McGuinness (SF) | 2011 | 243030 | 13.7 |
| Patrick McCartan (Ind) | 1945 | 212834 | 19.6 |
| Dana Rosemary Scallon (Ind) | 1997 | 172458 | 13.8 |
| Gay Mitchell (FG) | 2011 | 113321 | 6.4 |
| David Norris (Ind) | 2011 | 109469 | 6.2 |
| Adi Roche (Lab) | 1997 | 88423 | 6.9 |
| Derek Nally (Ind) | 1997 | 59529 | 4.7 |
| Dana Rosemary Scallon (Ind) | 2011 | 51220 | 2.9 |
| Mary Davis (Ind) | 2011 | 48657 | 2.7 |
Also, the following were elected unopposed:
- Douglas Hyde in 1938
- Seán T. O’Kelly in 1952
- Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh in 1974
- Patrick Hillery in 1976
- Patrick Hillery in 1983
- Mary McAleese in 2004
Avoiding hubris
“It was the best of time, it was the worst of times … it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair”
(A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens)
Congratulations first to Michael D. Higgins, who will be deemed elected as Ireland’s ninth president this afternoon. As someone who has spent a political career with a broad view of Irish culture and society, I’m confident he will serve us well. Congratulations also to Patrick Nulty, who won the bye-election, a man very far from my own politics, though one who will be a strong contributor in the Dáil and an interesting dynamic in this coalition. It was the first time since July 1982 that a candidate from a government party won a bye-election.
Yesterday’s election results were undeniably a bad day for Fine Gael. Gay Mitchell’s fourth place finish at 6.4% was by a good stretch the lowest the party has polled to date in any national election, with the 17% Austin Currie received in the 1990 presidential bid the next worst. In Dublin West, Eithne Loftus also finished fourth, though with a more respectable 15%. I would commiserate both candidates, and indeed all candidates in these elections. Particularly in the case of the presidential campaign, it was a very public and difficult campaign for them.
While the result for the party could have been devastating in 1990, when Currie’s performance led to the resignation of Alan Dukes as party leader, or had this occurred any time before the February election, where Fine Gael won 36% of the vote, becoming the largest party in terms of both votes and seats for the first time. That the party could win the most number of Dáil seats in its history and then poll its lowest result, requires a more complex relationship and response.
I think some within the party misinterpreted the results of the February general election. It was a vote of support for a manifesto promising reform and competent government, and for the strong team of prospective ministers. But having come so recently to the party, the general election results did not mean that 36% of the electorate were now dependable Fine Gael voters. There was no good reason to assume on the basis of this result that it was now Fine Gael’s turn to be the dominant party for 79 years. In the selection of the presidential candidate, some within the party seemed to work on the assumption that having got into a habit of voting Fine Gael earlier this year, people would naturally come out and vote for the Fine Gael candidate for president, putting the party on a starting platform at that level and with that lead on a first count, transfers would inevitably put them over the line. As it was Fine Gael’s best chance to date to win the presidency (and next to 1966, it almost certainly was), many within the party felt it natural that it should be someone who had served the party well and loyally through many years. Gay Mitchell was electorally successful at the time when Fine Gael’s popularity was low, one of three TDs to retain their seats in Dublin in 2002. He had a strong electoral track record till then, not losing a single public poll, though he had come fourth in the leadership contest after the 2002 election.
It was the party convention that selected him, with a broad base of the parliamentary party, councillor and the national executive. And Mitchell was encouraged to seek the party’s nomination by a number of TDs, as well as by former party leader and Taoiseach, John Bruton.
But many of the things which Gay Mitchell used publicly to present himself as a the best candidate to the Fine Gael Presidential Convention were things that made him a less appealing candidate to the electorate at large. He appealed to the fact that he had been a party member from the age of 16, whereas another of the candidates had only joined that week. While a reference to a mere 100 days as a party member might have dissuaded other party members, it means little to the public at large, the overwhelming number of them are not members of Fine Gael, and would not consider joining, even if they would vote for us. We have to avoid falling into the trap of thinking that either personalities or policies are good or bad because of their relationship to different parties. This is perhaps most true of the office of president, given that office-holders are expected to sever formal links with their party, but it is true more generally
The problem with focusing so much on an appeal to party members brings to mind the problem with a focus on Buy Irish as a means of economic development; just as a country’s industry will not become rich relying on its compatriots, but by being good enough that others will buy them too, someone cannot win a 50%+1 election relying on their own party’s base. Statements during the campaign that Mitchell would be a good choice because he would be able to work closely with Enda Kenny as Taoiseach probably fell entirely on deaf ears because of people’s perception of the nature of the role of president.
Mitchell’s appeal to Christian democracy held sway within certain sections of Fine Gael, but it immediately turned off large sections of the wider public. This is something we should certainly take heed from. While the airing of particular points of view in the Christian democratic tradition did not affect the party that much in February, without being part of a broader package of economic competence and reform to balance it, it did have an effect.
The most important thing I think we should get from this, to avoid the hubris of thinking that at 36% in the election, and still at around that figure in opinion polls, that the public at large support us because we are Fine Gael, rather than because of what we proposed and are doing in government. In contrasting the results between February and October, and indeed from the party’s electoral history since 1933, I don’t think it is even fair to consider yesterday’s vote the core Fine Gael support. This should not in any respect affect Enda Kenny’s strength as Taoiseach and leader of Fine Gael. And because we are still doing well in polls, and because I believe the country will be in better place in 2016, I would not really hold to the “despair” in the epithet above.
There is a similar lesson from the 30th Amendment Bill, the proposal to allow for Oireachtas Inquiries, and in this case, Labour also fell foul of the trap of hubris. We don’t yet know if it will be defeated, but it seems more likely than not. During the general election campaign, both parties promised citizens’ engagement with the reform of the Constitution and the political process. We are delivering on this, with the Constitutional Convention in the new year. But these Amendments could easily have been part of that, and I think it should now be considered bad practice in most instances, outside of very technical amendments like that on Local Government in 1999, to schedule referendums on the same day as other elections.
Opposition to the cabinet confidentiality referendum held at the last presidential election
At the last presidential election, held 30 October 1997, there was also a ballot to amend the constitution, the 17th Amendment to the Constitution Bill. This was to safeguard the tradition of cabinet confidentiality with explicit exceptions which sought to correct a difficulty which Justice Liam Hamilton found during the Beef Tribunal, when he was unable to question Ray Burke on his recollections of a cabinet meeting. With three tribunals of inquiry established in 1997 alone, this was of increasing importance.
It involved the insertion of a new Article 28.4.3°: -
The confidentiality of discussions at meetings of the Government shall be respected in all circumstances save only where the High Court determines that disclosure should be made in respect of a particular matter –
- in the interests of the administration of justice by a Court, or
- by virtue of an overriding public interest, pursuant to an application in that behalf by a tribunal appointed by the Government or a Minister of the Government on the authority of the Houses of the Oireachtas to inquire into a matter stated by them to be of public importance.
The amendment was supported by the five leading parties; the wording had originally been drafted during the lifetime of the Fine Gael–Labour–Democratic Left coalition, and the coalition of Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats, which had been in government since June, carried the amendment bill forward, proposing it in September.
It was opposed within the Dáil by the Green Party, whose John Gormley described the attempt to railroad the amendment as “tantamount to blackmail” (The Irish Times, 28 Oct. 1997).
More notably and contentious politically, it was also opposed by senior figures within the Progressive Democrats. Party founder and former leader, Des O’Malley, then a backbench government TD, criticised the bill in the Dáil as being too restrictive. He spoke (Vol. 480, No. 4, Col. 680) of his own experiences of a Minister, and the effect the amendment would have on the ability of former ministers to write memoirs,
I was a Minister for 13 years and I know it is usual to speak with the Secretary. Will this now be illegal? Frequently it is necessary to speak with a number of civil servants about matters discussed at Cabinet. This is perfectly proper but the current proposal will make it illegal.
I am in the unusual position of having resigned, for good reason, on two occasions from Government. I know the procedure and the trauma occasioned by this. At present there is an absolute right for a Minister to explain to the House why he resigned from Cabinet. However, what is now proposed will preclude him from doing so. This is ridiculous.
It is a tradition in Britain and less so here that former Ministers write their memoirs. Two were written here in recent years by former Deputies Garret FitzGerald and Gemma Hussey. Both quote extensively from what was said and done at Cabinet meetings. In Britain, almost every former Minister writes his or her memoirs, quoting extensively from Cabinet discussions. Bona fide students of history need to know what discussions take place in Cabinet but now they will not be able to find out.
He criticized the rush of the bill, and called for it to be redrafted and delayed until the vote on the Amsterdam Treaty (which ultimately took place in May 1998).
Also outspoken was former Progressive Democrat TD (and future party leader), Michael McDowell. He publicly clashed with Mary Harney, then leader, after he wrote in an article for the Irish Independent that the proposal was “the predictable consequence of running the country out of the hip pocket and handbag of coalition leaders, without consultation or reflection”. He had also around this time criticized Mary Harney for rowing in behind Fianna Fáil and giving formal party support to Mary McAleese as a presidential candidate. He announced on Questions and Answers that he intended to allow his party membership to last until March. Significantly however, he would “not unequivocally rule out any future role in politics” (The Irish Times, 25 Oct. 1997).
The Irish Times editorial line was opposed to the referendum, with a heading “Vote No” to the editorial on the day of the vote and columnists Dr Garret FitzGerald, former Taoiseach, and Vincent Browne also wrote against it. Garret FitzGerald criticized the way that “the best that two successive government have been able to come up with has been a constitutional amendment for just two very specific and limited exceptions, outside of which the dangerous rigidity of Supreme Court’s ruling will continue to operate in a thoroughly perverse way”. He echoed O’Malley’s concerns of the right of resigning ministers to give an explanation, a right of a minister to discuss cabinet with civil servants, and the effect it would have on historians (18 Oct. 1997). Vincent Browne proposed an alternative constitutional amendment, “The confidentiality of government discussions shall not be a matter of Constitutional right but shall be regulated by law” (29 Oct. 1997), and expressed confidence that a further appeal to the Supreme Court would overturn their ruling of 1992.
The Irish Council for Civil Liberties opposed the amendment on similar grounds to those of Des O’Malley and Garret FitzGerald mentioned above (The Irish Times, 27 Oct. 1997).
It would be a stretch to draw any direct parallels between the referendum on cabinet confidentiality and tomorrow’s referendum on Oireachtas inquiries, it is interesting at least to find Michael McDowell, the Green Party, the Irish Council for Civil Liberties and The Irish Times, (and Vincent Browne as a columnist), again on the same side calling for a No vote. (And it was also Brendan Howlin who spoke for the Labour Party in the Dáil supporting the Amendment).
Ultimately, it passed by 52% to 48%, with 5% of votes spoiled. I would imagine that tomorrow’s vote on Oireachtas inquiries will be similarly tight, and again with a high proportion of votes spoiled.
