Upset at the Polls
Fisher, Desmond
bungling the most elemental tasks, but with one of the Communist powers on our side, we really can't lose. So we win. In the old-time pattern, we would immediately make friends with the...
...It had been played down in the party manifestoes, rating one paragraph in Fianna Fail's 47-page blockbuster...
...Most of the other appointments were merely a reshuffle of the same men into different posts...
...Lynch's other appointments, the key posts being taken by men who filled them in the last Fianna F~iil administration...
...The new government has now a 20-seat majority over all the rest...
...George Colley...
...concern was treated almost like subversion...
...They have very dissimilar backgrounds...
...The complaints were brushed aside...
...Commonweal: 519...
...If we did it to the Russians to prevent their becoming Chinese, within 5 years after the war, our markets would be flooded with cheapo Russki TV sets, cars, tape recorders, cameras...
...Garrett FitzGerald, Foreign Minister in the former administration, was elected unanimously to succeed Mr...
...Again the strategy failed...
...FRANK GETLEIN 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 FROM IRELAND UPSET A T THE The recent general election shattered the political scene in Ireland...
...As part of the process we would ship into Russia, say, all-new factories, transit systems, fountain pens and wrist watches to keep the Russians from becoming Chinese...
...Charles J. Haughey, whom Mr...
...Conor Cruise O'Brien, Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, would get back, even if only narrowly...
...With Lynch now back in office and FitzGerald and Cluskey leading the opposition ranks, Irish politics will be interesting in the period ahead...
...But there were serious allegations about prison conditions, about police bru.taSty (Commonweal, April 15, 1977) and about government intentions regarding media censorship...
...The pundits' predictions were bolstered by a revision of constituency boundaries which seemed to copperfasten the coalition's position...
...Ministers refused to give an account of their stewardship...
...The election result was a surprise to the pundits...
...A barrister by profession, an economist by preference and a journalist and politician by necessity, he is considered Europe's fastest-talking politician and is the despair of the parliamentary shorthand-writers in Dublin...
...They did it by turning four-seat constituencies, in which they could have expected two seats out of the four, into three-seaters in which they hoped to pick up two seats to the Opposition's one...
...Garret FitzGerald, Foreign Minister and Dr...
...It threw out of office the Fine GaelLabor Party coalition which had been returned in 1973, ending 16 unbroken years of rule by Fianna F~iil, the party founded by Eamonn de Valera in 1927...
...Frank Cluskey, a parliamentary secretary in charge of social welfare, narrowly won the leadership of the Labor party...
...Instead it averaged five percent and up to seven percent in some of the key Dublin constituencies which returned 43 of the 148 Dfiil seats and which had all...
...None of the three coalition governments has succeeded in winning two terms of office in a row and the latest failure to do so will make it difficult for the disgruntled members of both partners to continue the arrangement...
...They had, one and all, predicted that the Coalition, with Ministers as well-known internationally as Dr...
...Lynch goes, giving him the edge over Mr...
...Lynch, if returned to power, might appoint as Minister Mr...
...The other interesting appointment was that of Professor Martin O'Donoghue, University professor and Mr...
...Periodic censuses provide the statistical basis on which the number of seats in Dfiil gireann is determined and it has hitherto fallen to the Minister for Local Government to reorganize constituency boundaries accordingly...
...Caught up in Common Market business, they had neglected their constitutencies...
...DESMOND FISHER (Desmond Fisher is Commonweal's regular correspondent in Ireland...
...The Fascist-like trend led to the judgment that while Fianna Fail had taken 12 years to get too big for their boots, it had taken the Coalition only 12 months...
...The appointment as Tanaiste strengthens his claim to the leadership when Mr...
...Only in the final days, when it was clear that Fianna Fail had dominated the campaign, did the government hint that a Fianna Fail Government would not, in certain circumstances, be as trustworthy on the Northern Ireland issue as the Coalition...
...But both men are of a like mind, open, liberal and far-seeing...
...But there were carrots as well...
...What they meant was that Mr...
...It said it relied on its record...
...Despite all the traumatic events of recent years, Northern Ireland did not figure as an issue in the campaign...
...The election result was, therefore, as much a vote against the Coalition as a vote for Fianna Fail shown by the unexpectedly high support for independent, particularly women, candidates...
...Tully miscalculated the size of the swing against the government...
...What the protest was about is arguable...
...Lynch's closest economics adviser, as Minister for Economic Planning...
...Its tired Ministers campaigned listlessly...
...It was only four years and four months since they had come into office as a government of all the talents, committed to a program of reform...
...But the factories, transit systems, fountain pens and wrist watches so shil~ped would, in the nature of things, be far advanced over those we ourselves had unharmed at home...
...They brought with them a glimpse of new frontiers and an echo of President John F. Kennedy's inaugural address about not asking what the country could do for you but what you could do for your country...
...We can kill all the Russians we want but save the Russian means of production in all its comforting obsolescence, inefficiency and blessed non-competitive state...
...19 August 1977:518 That the result was a protest vote there can be no doubt...
...Haughey who was his rival in the leadership stakes in 1966, when Mr...
...But two were of special interest...
...FitzGerald, aged 51, is a son of the former Foreign Minister in the Dfiil of 1922...
...In the old-time pattern, we would immediately make friends with the defeated enemy in order to forge a new alliance against the former ally and now potential enemy...
...It precipitated resignations as party leaders of Fine Gael's Liam Cosgrave, who had been Tooiseach or Prime Minister from 1973, and the Labor Party's Brendan Corish...
...Expected, too, were Mr...
...But it appealed to the voters, particularly to the young...
...One was the naming as Tanaiste (deputy Prime Minister) and Minister for Finance and the Public Service of Mr...
...Meanwhile, the coalition parties have got new leaders...
...Lynch named his new administration on July 5. But he was firmly lodged in the safe job of Minister for Health and Social Welfare, where he will have a busy time reorganizing a health service in deep difficulties, The appointment was e~pected because Mr...
...If you try, you, too, can learn to love that bomb...
...It swept Fianna Ffiil back into power with the greatest number of seats won by any Irish party since 1922...
...Haughey had been Opposition spokesman on health for the past few years since his restoration to the Fianna Ffiil, front bench...
...Naturally enough, the Minister tries to make sure his surgery benefits the ruling ,party or parties...
...Fianna Fail offered a glittering package of electoral goodies including abolition of all rates (i.e., local tax on householders) and taxes on smaller cars, reduction in income tax, $1,700 grants to first-time house buyers, and a crash program to create jobs, especially for schoolleavers, the whole package to be financed initially by borrowing...
...Under the proportional representation system used for Irish elections, the government would have been safe with a maximum swing against them up to three percent...
...Fianna Ffiil had changed the constituency boundaries substantially before the 1973 election, but they had miscalculated the size of the swing against them and their strategy failed...
...The revision was carried out by the Coalition's Minister for Local Government, Mr...
...If anyone can keep their parties in a loose arrangement so as to facilitate a future coalition, it is they...
...James Tully, in pursuance of a constitutional provision requiring that there should be one Deputy in Dfiil l~ireann (the lower House of Parliament) for each 20,000-30,000 of the population...
...Certainly rising prices and falling employment were key factors...
...Cluskey, aged 47, is of Dublin working-class origin, having started work at the age of 13 for thirteen shillings ($1.10) a week...
...Lynch came in as a compromise choice...
...Professor O'Donoghue was the chief architect of Fianna F~il's winning election manifesto: in his new post he will have the job of making it work...
...They lost v o t e s or seats...
...but one, been turned into 3-seaters...
...It goes round in circles and it's got a big hole in the middle...
...Lynch had sacked from a previous administration on suspicion of conspiring to import arms illegally (the charge was later dismissed in court...
...The Coalition government changed the constituencies again in a way calculated to do them most good...
...The government decided to play the campaign coolly...
...Haughey was, in fact, appointed to the Cabinet when Mr...
...two paragraphs in the government's more modest publication...
...The neutron bomb delivers us from all that...
...prices were up almost 100 percent in the Coalition's period of office and unemployment shot up to about 12 percent...
...It refused to "go into a Dutch auction with Fianna Fail on promises...
...Cosgrave took a poor view of the package: ,'They'll either break their promises or break the country," he said...
...The protest too was about the Coalition's arrogant style of government...
...Few disagreed with its tough law-and-order policy as far as it was directed against the Provisional IRA...
...His Finance Minister, Richie Ryan, was equally skeptical...
...That formula, basically, is what has made Germany and Japan the fierce market cornpetitors they are, with severely damaging effects on our own economy...
...When the campaign opened, both sides wanted to keep it out of contention...
...Their manifesto is like their pop record (disc)," he declared...
...Instead of keeping the Coalition in office, the balance of advantage worked in Fianna Ffiil's favor, returned them with 84 seats instead of the 66 they had before the poll...
...It seemed a new dawn in Irish political life and no one expected so early a sunset...
...And it has ended, temporarily at least and possibly for good, the coalition arrangement between their two ,parties, which had previously ruled from 1945-48 and 1954-57...
...What the government had overlooked was that half the people of Ireland are now under 26 years of age and one-fifth of the 2.1 million eleetoratemsome 440,000 voters-were entitled to vote for the first time...
...Cosgrave at the head of Fine Gael...
...Inflation would soar, as would unemployment and there wouldn't be a darn thing we could do about it for fear the Russians might start taping their eyes into slants...
Vol. 104 • August 1977 • No. 17
