Hello, Mrs Robinson:

...Also to be taken into account is that the office of president is largely ceremonial with few real powers, and that the outcome has no direct effect on the government...

...But a few days later, the Irish Times released a taped interview of last May in which Lenihan admitted he had made that call...

...In a more immediate way, the election will have its impact on the two major parties...

...Its performance in this presidential election was seen as the final test of its leader, Alan Dukes...

...Her twenty-year career as a Labor party member in the Irish Senate was characterized by her outspoken advocacy of liberal causes...

...What it tells has shocked many but elated others...

...The traditional alliance of conservative Catholicism and nationalism, on which the present governing Fianna Fail party built its electoral support, appears now decisively on the wane...

...Then, two weeks before polling day, the campaign was suddenly electrified...

...She was surprised, therefore, to be approached by the party last January and invited to stand as Labor's presidential candidate...

...Yet Robinson proved a formidable opponent, tapping into a widespread feeling that the presidency should be more than a consolation prize for retiring politicians, and Lenihan found himself forced to accept the agenda of a more active working presidency...

...It may yet be seen as opening an era in which the Irish political system regained the ability to express the real issues and struggles dividing Irish society...

...Brian Lenihan, a loyal party member who had served in government for decades, enjoyed warm popular support across the political spectrum...

...While much of her support came from the urban, liberal middle class, as well as a sizable working-class vote, what gave Robinson the edge was her surprising strength in rural hamlets, places where she had no party machine working for her...

...Privately many grassroots church workers would have supported her, but one can only speculate that she would not have been the preferred choice of many senior churchmen...

...For the surprise victory in the November 7 presidential election of a lawyer with a long track record of working for the liberalization of laws on contraception and divorce as well as championing the right to information on abortion is being hailed as a milestone in the development of Irish society...

...Mary Robinson, on December 3 was seen here as marking far more than a welcome boost for Irish women...

...As Robinson said herself: "The women of Ireland went out there to vote...

...The fact that the party's candidate, Austin Currie, managed only 17 percent of the poll in the three-way presidential contest immediately opened the prospect of a serious threat to Dukes's leadership from within the party...

...While that achievement is unique in Irish political history, its significance may be even more remarkable...

...Among them are serious blunders made by the governing Fianna Fail party and the difficulties of the main opposition party, Fine Gael, in finding a candidate...

...Traditionally the major opposition party, under the leadership of the former Prime Minister Garret FitzGerald, it rivaled Fianna Fail's dominance of Irish politics...

...The impact of the campaign on Fianna Fail was not foreseen...

...But in a subsequent television interview, she identified herself as a Catholic who takes her Catholicism very seriously...

...Even the most enthusiastic left-wing activist would not claim that it represents any great electoral breakthrough for left-wing politics, or that Fianna Fail will be decimated in the next general election...

...In an interview in a music magazine early in the campaign, she strongly attacked the "male-dominated patriarchy" of the Catholic church, terms the Irish are not used to hearing from candidates for high office...

...This attracted some public sympathy for Lenihan, and the party hoped his success in the election would limit the fallout of the affair...

...The Labor party, with 12 percent of the votes, along with the Workers party and the Green party, would give her a support base of around 20 percent...

...Much to everyone's surprise, the campaign that was expected to be an easy victory by Fianna Fail Deputy Prime Minister Brian Lenihan, ended up throwing both Fianna Fail and Fine Gael into disarray...

...Interestingly, the church played no part in the election campaign...

...PEADAR KIRBY...

...They went out because they had a sense of purpose...

...Most commentators give the credit to Robinson herself for the victory...

...Losing the presidency, however, adds further to the party's problems...

...All agree, however, that Robinson's victory is largely symbolic...

...She said she supports the kind of church that stands by the poor, as embodied by some priests and sisters whose names she mentioned...

...As Robinson said in interview after interview during her campaign: We want to hold our head up with pride as Irish people in the new Europe...

...then his contradictory versions of events badly damaged his credibility...

...As the Labor party leader, Dick Spring, put it on the night the result was declared: "Six months ago people would not have given us a thousand-to-one chance of winning...

...As many have remarked of the result, it reveals an Ireland looking forward to the future with hope rather than forever looking back at the past with nostalgia...

...Many reasons are being given for what is seen as the greatest electoral upset in Irish politics...

...The Supreme Court has since interpreted this to make any dissemination of information on abortion illegal, including the telephone numbers of abortion clinics outside of Ireland...

...And, while many commentators hailed the party's imaginative and courageous choice, no one gave Robinson a serious chance of winning...

...Women had turned out in large numbers to support her...

...When asked on a television show whether he had telephoned President Hillery in February 1982 to influence him not to call a general election after a coalition government of Fine Gael and Labor was defeated on a vote in the Deil (parliament), Lenihan denied the charge...

...While a leadership challenge is not immediately predicted, the affair has inflicted serious wounds on Ireland's largest party...

...It is a great day for us, for our children and our grandchildren...

...The forty-six-year-old Robinson has long been a controversial figure...

...Other commentators have seen the victory as the breakthrough into national politics of the new, young, and pluralist Ireland...

...But the party has slumped badly over recent years...

...Before polling day, with Lenihan and Robinson running neck and neck in the opinion polls, the Irish Times said the outcome of the election would tell Ireland a lot about itself...

...Her election closed a decade in which the Irish electorate had decisively rejected the legalization of divorce and had added a clause to the constitution protecting the right to life of the unborn...

...Lenihan's admission that he had tried to influence the president's decision reflected negatively on his capacity to fill the presidential office with independence...

...This was enhanced by a widely publicized kidney transplant early last year which saw him return to active politics with a new lease on life...

...Senior government ministers, including the Taoiseach (prime minister), Charles Haughey, supported Lenihan's denials, but with the government's credibility damaged, the minority partner in government, the Progressive Democrats, demanded that Lenihan be dismissed and Haughey complied by sacking his loyal lieutenant...

...Her concern that the viewpoint of Northern Ireland Protestants was not adequately taken into account at the time of the signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement in 1985 led to her resignation from the Labor party and her return to private life...

...Fine Gael's problems were predictable...

...But it does leave analysts wondering what it says about the issues that will determine the shape of Irish politics...

...Her strategy was borne out on polling day...

...On these issues the new president was an outspoken opponent of what proved to be the people's will, a fact her opposition continually brought to the attention of the electorate...

...No one doubted he would be Ireland's next president...

...Her six-month campaign concentrated not on the high-profile rallies so favored by the larger parties but on traveling the length and breadth of the country, visiting grassroots groups, tapping into the concerns of ordinary people, and defining the presidency as a resource to encourage and strengthen what she described as the "fightback" she had discovered among the people...

...Her victory is therefore all the more remarkable, and indicates that the Irish electorate is more sophisticated and complex than many give it credit for...