The Race for the Áras

by Tom Reddy

  Gallagher wasn’t relaxing. ‘I wasn’t a senior figure.’

  ‘You were a campaign director for the TD at the time.’

  ‘I had been in 2007. I was quite happy to assist in this event by inviting local business people. The allegation is made that there is something corrupt. The cheque was made out to Fianna Fáil.’

  ‘The allegation is that you haven’t been telling the truth, Mr Gallagher. That’s the allegation.’

  ‘No, not at all.’

  ‘There is no allegation of corruption. The allegation is that you haven’t been telling the truth. There is no allegation of corruption here at all.’

  ‘I always tell the truth, and anyone who knows and has watched my campaign knows two things: that I do not get involved in negative campaigning, and I always tell the truth—always.’

  There the interview ended.

  It had been a forensic interrogation by a skilled interviewer, who had got his subject to admit to telling two untruths, about recruiting potential donors and then soliciting money.

  Gallagher’s attack on the motivation of Glenna Lynch made him appear bullying and unwilling to take questions from a member of the public about his financial dealings, which had been a smouldering controversy over the last days of the campaign. The crucial question now was, with a fifteen-point lead in the opinion polls, had he done enough to maintain that lead with the public—or was his campaign damaged beyond repair?

  Credibility is a central characteristic required by a presidential candidate, and already political pundits were openly saying he was damaged. How much? was the question.

  A broadcast moratorium was due to take effect from 2 p.m. the following day, which would end all radio and TV broadcast discussion and speculation about the election. For Gallagher the moratorium was a two-edged sword. It shut down debate and exposure on the airwaves; and that would be a positive if he had satisfactorily answered his critics and explained his case fully. The question remained: had he fudged or left questions unanswered? Only the electorate would answer those questions definitively.

  Political commentators had a sense of déjà vu as Gallagher contradicted his own version of events. In the midst of the October 1990 presidential election campaign the Fianna Fáil nominee and front runner Brian Lenihan (senior) had denied that he had tried to contact the President eight years earlier to urge him not to dissolve the Dáil. However, a postgraduate politics student and journalist, Jim Duffy, produced a tape to the Irish Times that recorded Lenihan agreeing that he had phoned the Áras.

  Lenihan’s campaign imploded. He tried to rescue it by going on the six o’clock TV news, when he memorably said that ‘on mature reflection’ he recalled that he had in fact phoned the Áras. His campaign collapsed, and almost overnight his popularity plummeted by eighteen points in the opinion polls. He was subsequently sacked as a minister by the Taoiseach, Charles Haughey, and the presidential race was won by Mary Robinson.

  The following morning’s papers, on the eve of voting, confirmed Gallagher’s worst fears. The onslaught was changing public opinion. Two opinion polls put Higgins as the favoured candidate. Boylesports carried out an opinion poll in the wake of the ‘Frontline’ programme that had 47 per cent saying they would trust Michael D. Higgins and 44 per cent that they would not trust Seán Gallagher as President.

  A total of 28 per cent of those surveyed said the debate changed their minds on who they would vote for; 34 per cent would give Higgins their number 1, and 25 per cent would give Gallagher their number 1, and 24 per cent would prefer McGuinness.

  Ballotbox.ie, which campaigns for the extension of voting rights to the Irish diaspora, published an opinion poll it had conducted over the previous six days. A total of 2,581 people took part. Higgins took 40 per cent of first preferences, Norris came second, with 24 per cent, McGuinness polled 18 per cent, while Gallagher polled 10 per cent. Mitchell and Davis scored 3 per cent each and Dana 1 per cent.

  The web site required voters to provide their passport details to ensure they were eligible to participate in the real vote. Voters from the Republic were blocked with a firewall, but votes were recorded from countries as diverse as England, Australia, Canada, the United States, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Yemen and Kazakhstan. The poll was carried out with no specific reference to the ‘Frontline’ programme, but its result added to a growing swell of support for Higgins.

  The Irish Times had dedicated two full pages to letters to the editor, and they ranged across the spectrum of public opinion, whether indignant, entertaining, questioning or whimsical. A serial correspondent on political matters was David Carroll, a pharmacist and political activist from Boyle, Co. Roscommon.

  The closing stage dénouement of Seán Gallagher’s role as a Fianna Fáil fundraiser, collecting cheques for thousands of euros in brown envelopes, is all the worse for his initial denial that it happened, followed by his failure to recollect the specifics despite it only being a couple of years ago. Sadly, ‘FF’, ‘cheques’, ‘envelopes’ and ‘poor recollection’ are all back in the public discourse again.

  Mr Gallagher may well be a proxy candidate for Fianna Fáil, but he in no way represents the ideals to which the party ought to aspire if it is to survive. We have been down this road before and the time has come for us to decide what we want to stand for—populism or principles. If he wins tomorrow, it’s no victory for Fianna Fáil.

  The last opinion poll of the day was published shortly before the broadcasting moratorium began. Today FM’s hugely popular ‘Ray D’Arcy Show’ opened the text lines, asking listeners: Who will you be voting for tomorrow?

  The mid-morning show recorded 249,000 listeners in the most recent audience figures released shortly before the election, only 30,000 behind its competitor, Pat Kenny’s ‘Today Show’ on RTE—figures that showed the significant reach to voting audiences. A total of 5,414 votes were cast. As it was a text vote, there could be multiple votes by supporters or even organised groups of supporters. The result, however, was instructive.

  Mitchell came last, with 2½ per cent, Dana was slightly ahead with 3 per cent, while Davis scored 5 per cent and Norris 9½ per cent, which would suggest that they would not receive state funding for their election bid. Above the threshold was McGuinness, polling at 18 per cent, Higgins at 28 per cent and Gallagher topping the poll at 33½ per cent—a lead, but a much-eroded one that could see Higgins win on transfers.

  Fergus Finlay, a former Labour Party contender, in his eve-of-poll Evening Herald column wrote that

  for many years to come, people will talk about the master stroke that catapulted Martin McGuinness into this election, and the even more powerful intervention he made on Monday night, when he fatally destroyed Seán Gallagher’s credibility. The man, who had had a ‘sporadic’ relationship with Fianna Fáil, was suddenly revealed as a complete, and compliant, insider.

  Finlay said he believed that McGuinness’s intervention would not win him the election, and that

  the hand grenade McGuinness blew up under Gallagher’s credibility, as devastating as it was, may still not be enough to cost Gallagher the election. But at least it crystallised the choice—and that crystal-clear choice will be what will cost Seán Gallagher this election. Good and decent people contested too, and they will lose, damaged beyond recovery by the most searching examination possible, unable to fight back against some of the most unfair accusations made.

  He went on to endorse Higgins.

  Because the choice couldn’t be clearer, we all know now that we’re choosing between a spoofer and a statesman, an ‘entrepreneur’ and a man of real and transparent values.

  Below the Finlay article the Herald published the feature Gallagher had written the previous day in the midst of the ‘Frontline’ storm. Gallagher’s fury and bitterness breathed like a dragon’s fire from the text. He raged in a vitriolic attack on Sinn Féin and a personal attack on McGuinness, rather than another attempt to explain the issues.

  The programme had produc
ed a political ambush,

  cooked up in the bowels of a party that has been such a destructive influence on this country. Sinn Féin has turned the corner in abandoning its armed struggle, but it has swapped its Armalites for the forceps for delivering a crude political hatchet job which must breed despair in any voter who believes that the discourse of elections should be above such tactics.

  Martin McGuinness may have proven himself to have certain qualities in helping deliver peace to this island but he is no statesman. He comes from the narrowest of confines of almost bitter party politics, a view of Ireland through a twisted prism.

  As I rose in the polls, the ferocity of the mud being flung in my direction intensified, almost to a frenzy. Everything seemed to be fair game, from questioning whether I had bought a farm with my late father to unwarranted intrusions into the lives of my siblings.

  When I dared last Sunday in the Herald’s sister paper the Sunday Independent to ask Mr McGuinness to assist the Gardaí with any information he might have regarding the murder of Detective Garda Jerry McCabe, the full wrath of Sinn Féin’s muck-raking was unleashed. It may serve Sinn Féin well. Mr McGuinness may increase their vote, possibly by a sizeable margin on their showing in the recent General Election. But at what cost?

  I will hold my head up high that I ran a clean campaign, focused on reinventing this country through a return to community endeavour and participation. Whether the public can recover a sense of hope from a campaign mired in destructiveness and negativity is another matter.

  Across the central fold of the paper the Herald devoted an unprecedented page to an editorial and a cartoon that excoriated McGuinness. The cartoon, published previously with an Eoghan Harris magazine article, was of McGuinness with an automatic rifle in one hand, money and a pistol poking out from his pockets, holding a Tricolour that had a clenched fist on the central panel, and displaying a devil’s tail. A balaclava lay on the floor in front of him. The message was blunt.

  A presidential election is completely different to any other political contest. It is not about carving up political power, deciding policies or choosing a Government. Instead it is a moment where we make a powerful symbolic statement about what kind of country we want to be. That’s why no sensible Irish person should even think about giving their number one vote to Martin McGuinness tomorrow.

  The Sinn Féin candidate has certainly had a powerful impact on this race, transforming it from a bland soap opera into a struggle for the soul of the nation.

  Now that the campaign is almost over, the bottom line is that there are 1,800 good reasons not to put this man in the Áras—one for every innocent victim that the IRA murdered during his time as their ruthless commander.

  Over the last couple of weeks, the relatives of IRA victims have finally made their voices heard—and as far as they are concerned, the fact that he has the cheek to run at all is a slap in the face to the memory of their loved ones. From the moment he was confronted by the son of murdered soldier Patrick Kelly in an Athlone shopping centre it was clear that this was one lie he couldn’t get away with. His opinion poll numbers have been dropping ever since, a clear sign that Sinn Féin’s decision to bring him south was not the tactical masterstroke they thought.

  Whatever Gallagher may have done for Fianna Fáil, his actions are surely in a different moral universe to what McGuinness and his armed henchmen got away with in the North for 25 blood soaked years.

  Sinn Féin once boasted that they would take power in the republic ‘with an Armalite in one hand and a ballot paper in the other’. Tomorrow, with a simple pencil and paper, we can make a powerful statement on behalf of the 1,800 innocent victims who can no longer speak for themselves.

  It was a powerful piece of writing, unprecedented in that it didn’t favour a party or individual but instead clearly and forcibly argued its view about the necessity to keep McGuinness and his party out at all costs.

  The election threw up a diversity of opinion and a fierce focus of attention. In the closing week the media concentrated relentlessly on the three leading contenders—Gallagher, Higgins and McGuinness—who had moved to centre stage, ignoring the trailing candidates.

  Earlier the same morning the Herald’s sister paper, the Irish Independent, published a column that argued that ‘Gallagher’s myth-making will bring shame on Aras.’ Bruce Arnold called on Gallagher to resign from the election, because of ‘sustained misleading of the public.’ He went on to claim that his web site, from the start of the campaign, had been misleading about his involvement with Fianna Fáil, claiming he had invented a character for himself in his efforts to distance himself from Fianna Fáil.

  Arnold also turned on the voting public.

  I find all of this a deeply shocking narrative that cannot be explained, excused or exonerated. It is made worse by the gullibility of the Irish public. Their gobdaw acceptance of this man and his amazing, sustained fiction about himself has turned what many think of as a pretender into a leading contender for the highest office in the land.

  On the campaign trail, things were not improving for either Mitchell or Davis. Davis’s campaign coach, wrapped in her picture and campaign messages, broke down on the final day of the campaign in Maynooth.

  In St Stephen’s Green Shopping Centre, Gay Mitchell maintained that he would do better in the only poll that counted, rather than the predicted opinion polls. Fionnan Sheahan reported:

  In trademark fashion, it took him 45 seconds to get tetchy with the media and 1 minute 45 seconds to get into an argument over the questions he was being asked. ‘I’m very unhappy with the number of times I have been asked about the polls and the campaign and never been asked about the Presidency or the fact that we have 437,000 people unemployed and the President can make a real difference. It’s clear to me that people need to look at the media and particularly the media that you represent and ask for some sort of standards,’ he said.

  The Irish Independent printed a photograph of McGuinness in Andy Dolan’s hair salon in Ballyfermot, Dublin, on the day before polling, with Adams hovering over him with a comb and scissors. Reportedly delighted with his ‘Frontline’ demolition of Gallagher’s candidacy, McGuinness was reported as saying:

  It probably turned out to be the most important debate of all the debates that were held. I think we’ve seen over the last forty-eight hours the real Sean Gallagher, and I would like to think I’ve done a service to the people of Ireland in terms of dealing with an issue which clearly showed Sean to be absolutely at the heart of the culture of cronyism.

  On the editorial page the Irish Independent offered its own service to the people of Ireland, urging ‘Don’t vote for Martin McGuinness,’ saying he had failed to be honest with the electorate and did not deserve an endorsement.

  From the off, Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness has lied about his role in the IRA and has been consistently ambiguous in his condemnation of atrocities carried out by the Provisional IRA throughout the Troubles.

  The families of victims of the IRA on this side of the Border have bravely spoken out against Mr McGuinness’s candidacy and their voices merit being listened to.

  Nobody can credibly believe Mr McGuinness’s ridiculous claim he left the IRA in 1974 and played no further role—not even Sinn Fein members.

  Based upon their own experiences, former garda commissioners and ministers for justice have testified that he played a leading role in the IRA throughout the organisation’s campaign. The protection of the democratic institutions in a sovereign state remains paramount. Until Mr McGuinness is prepared to be open about his past, he cannot be trusted to be elected as president ‘down here’.

  Reminding the electorate that it was Judgement Day, the Star’s commentator Eamon Dunphy described Gallagher as a ‘three-dollar bill’, Mitchell as unwanted by his own party and Norris as carrying too much baggage. He praised McGuinness and Pat Kenny for ‘exposing’ Gallagher. ‘Tomorrow we might be talking about President Gallagher. If we are then we will be
a laughing stock and rightly so.’ Dunphy also said that McGuinness had been ‘savaged in the most appalling manner by official Ireland’s media.’

  That morning’s Star’s front page referred to ‘Hurricane Higgins’ and said he was poised to win the Presidency according to the bookies, who had been correct in their predictions for the past two presidential elections. Its editorial was uncharacteristically coded in its message to readers, urging them to exercise their right to vote but to ask themselves the question, ‘Which of the candidates is least likely over the next seven years to have something come back to haunt them from their past—something that could embarrass the nation and make us wish he or she was not in the Áras?’

  Chapter 16

  WINNER ALL RIGHT

  Members of the Defence Forces serving overseas, who were the first to vote for their new supreme commander, could watch the results unfold in real time through Irish and international news web sites. The media centre in Dublin Castle was the central studio for television and radio stations.

  Within an hour of the black polling-boxes being opened it was clear that Higgins was on course for a historic victory. There had been a dramatic swing from the leader in the opinion polls, Seán Gallagher. Gallagher’s campaign, as expected, had collapsed. McGuinness had polled well, boosted the party’s profile and justified its decision to run a candidate.

  The real loser would be Mitchell. He had failed to attract the huge popular vote for Fine Gael to his candidacy—and his director of elections would later draw up a report for presentation to the party leadership about the campaign and how the ultimate and attainable prize had slipped from their grasp.

  ‘I’d like to send my love and congratulations to Michael D, Sabina and the rest of the family,’ said a gracious David Norris. He had arrived at the count centre at 11 a.m., two hours after it had opened. RTE and other radio stations were offering regular updates and commentary as tallies poured in from count centres around the country.