WHETHER Fine Gael will pay the price the polls suggest for a shockingly incompetent election campaign we won’t know until Sunday or Monday. But regardless of whether leader Simon Harris gets another go at the big job or not, the party’s arrogance and hubris will in future be a political case study in how not to win friends and influence people.
The short campaign got off to an unsavoury but illuminating start when a room full of FG party activists laughed and clapped like seals when Michael O’Leary – the biggest argument against capitalism since the Great Depression – derided and mocked teachers for a cheap laugh. It ended with a disastrous campaign trail encounter that dominated the agenda for the better part of a week and cruelly exposed career politician Simon Harris’s utter disconnect from the country he wants to lead.
The theme that ran through both mini-dramas like the writing on a stick of rock was empathy – or the lack of it. The substance of the matter at hand was irrelevant: Mr O’Leary could have been correct in what he said about teachers (he wasn’t) and it wouldn’t have mattered a jot; Kanturk shopper Charlotte Fallon could have been wrong about the government’s lack of support for carers (she wasn’t) and it wouldn’t have changed a thing. Both incidents hit home because they highlighted the arrogance and callousness that over a century in and out of power has brought to both the Civil War parties.
Fine Gael’s misfortune this time round is to be led by a man who – forced by the election out of the protective embrace of his large and highly-paid PR team – has been shown to be devoid of a popular touch. For their part, Fianna Fáil have remained relatively stable as the Fine Gael-Sinn Féin polling was turned on its head, simply because they are led by a wily and hugely experienced campaign veteran in Micheál Martin.
It’s been the case for 50 years and more, but never did the mantra ‘time for change’ ring more urgently or compellingly as it does right now. Quite simply, Sinn Féin deserve the chance to govern. They turned the two-party political template in the South into a three-party one some considerable time ago, but due to a combination of FF/FG coalition machinations, an implacably hostile media and a series of serious political missteps, they haven’t yet had the opportunity to prove their claim that croneyism, landlordism and clientism have conspired to stop the ordinary people of the Republic from reaping the benefits of a newly cash-rich economy.
No party can form a majority government, simply because no party is running enough candidates to make that mathematically possible. And so post-weekend, the Republic will enter again into another wearying round of coalition negotiations. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael will again be negotiating the colour of the curtains in the Taoiseach’s office.
That coalition discussion needs this time round to have real substance and meaning.
