WHY SHE RAN, HOW SHE WON Improbable candidate beats the odds
Kelly, Mary Pat
Why she ran, how she won It seems so fitting that Mary Robinson is pres-ident of Ireland that it is hard to recall what a long shot her election was when she began her campaign in April 1990. The...
...In the campaign, Robinson presented an image of elegance, yet one that did not contradict her commitment to social change...
...and who came out massively to make their mark on the ballot paper, and on a new Ireland...
...The people sought a forum as much as solutions...
...As a Bourke from Ballena, County Mayo, she is descend-ed from Grace O'Malley de Burgho-Bourke, the queen of Connaught...
...In 1987 she would not sup-port the Anglo-Irish Agreement giving Dublin a con-sultative role in the North because, she argued, the Irish government had to espouse a true pluralism to show Northern Protestants that their right to religious freedom would be respected...
...Divorce and contraception were illegal...
...Though her commitment was to equality, she was labeled a radical and a feminist...
...So Robinson's campaign presented an opportunity to air national issues, positively, even powerfully...
...The Irish presidency is a ceremonial post, a reward given to an elder states-man for a job well done...
...Yet no other office in Ireland's parliamentary system is directly elected nationwide...
...He was a Protestant and their wedding was not the tribal celebration it would have been had she married within the clan...
...In many areas women in Ireland were still not afforded equal rights...
...When membership in the European Union meant that Ireland must abide by such directives as equal pay for equal work, the government in Dublin resisted...
...Dick Spring, head of the Labour party, with no more than 10 percent of the vote, had proposed Robinson's candidacy...
...Look what you did in this election...
...Senator Robinson threatened to take it to the European Court...
...And they are...
...They no longer had to resign their civil service posts when they married, but the laws retained a paternalistic bias and much of Irish legislation was aimed at maintaining an idealized family...
...And above all by the women of Ireland, who, instead of rocking the cradle, rocked the system...
...In every generation, the Bourkes played their part as chieftains...
...As Reed Professor of Constitutional and Criminal Law, Robinson concentrated on equal-treat-ment and freedom issues...
...She won by a margin of 86,000 votes, huge in Ireland...
...Their concerns were immediate: continuing emigration of the young, community building, financial stability, and overcoming a sense of alienation...
...When she began her cam-paign for president, pollsters found that some vot-ers thought she was Prnlestnnt because she was married to one...
...At the age of twenty-five, she was elected a senator, repre-senting the constituency of Trinity College, Dublin, the first Catholic ever...
...There is hope...
...Robinson's political career began in 1969...
...She had opposed the Catholic hierarchy on a number of issues, and she was attempting to win office in the most conservative coun-try in Western Europe...
...As she said on November 9,1990, when she was declared victorious: "I was elected by men and women of all parties and none, by many with great moral courage who stepped from the faded flags of the Civil War and voted for a new Ireland...
...She was greatly influenced by the activism she found there...
...Both her parents were doctors...
...Robinson's background was not one that would normally lead to questioning the status quo...
...Mary Bourke's marriage to Nick Robinson, then a political cartoonist for the Irish Times, did not fit the mold either...
...But a year in America, at Harvard (1967-68), was a turning point for Robinson...
...You made history.' As president, I hope we will make history together...
...Such labeling was what she had set out to change...
...MARY PAT KELLY...
...She had been a standout at Trinity during her years as a student there and had returned as a law professor after practicing in the west of Ireland...
...But to add to her uphill struggle, Robinson had previously resigned from Labour...
...The first woman to run for the presidency, Robinson had years of other con-troversial positions behind her...
...She also gave an interpretation of what her victory against the odds meant: 'To all those who have no voice or those whose voice is weak, I say, 'Take heart...
...Yet when Robinson hit the campaign trail she found that she knew and understood her people in all their complexity, and that they knew her...
...The campaign was not easy...
Vol. 124 • March 1997 • No. 5
