Post by earl on May 29, 2007 16:09:46 GMT
Voters in the Irish Republic seem unimpressed by Gerry Adams' attempts to woo them in the recent elections.
Gerry Adams now says that the general election in the Irish Republic was always going to be difficult for his Sinn Féin party. Yet, like any good boxing pro, he talked a good fight at the time. If he had doubts during the campaign, he didn't let it show.
In the event, the electorate largely returned to the two large populist parties of the southern state. Taoiseach Bertie Ahern's Fianna Fáil lost just two seats, and his opponent Enda Kenny's Fine Gael added 20 - mostly at the expense of independents and the smaller parties rather than the government.
Although Sinn Féin lost only one of its five seats, its ambition to double its tally and become a critical part of government never materialised. In fact they lost one of their two Dublin incumbents, and only retained the other up by a mere 69 votes. In real terms, they performed less well in the Republic than the tiny Alliance party in the Northern Ireland assembly elections in March.
However it is what Sinn Féin did not win that may hurt them most in the longer term. Their most prominent candidate, Mary Lou McDonald, who has featured in all campaigns north and south since she won a European seat in 2004 actually saw her vote fall in Dublin Central by 5.4%. Instead of building in the capital, where they had hoped for three gains, they are now hanging on by a very thin thread.
Liam Clarke in the Sunday Times offers a possible explanation:
"Instead of the five seats targeted in Dublin constituencies, one is the most they can hope for. They hoped for as many as 12 TDs but they will end up with less than they started with. The unstoppable Sinn Féin bandwagon, which is still supposed to deliver Irish unity by 2016, is off the tracks and needs a refit.
"Community workers in Dublin say Sinn Féin has lost some of its appeal in working-class communities.
"'The party is not as active in these areas as people would believe,' one former Sinn Féin activist said. 'They are no longer associated with the anti-drugs movement, or even most community groups. Gerry Adams rambles on about the scourge of heroin in the city but on the ground the Shinners are doing nothing about it.
"'They do a lot of talking but nobody believes a word they say round here. Local community groups see Sinn Féin in the same light as the other parties. They show up when they want something.'"
The party's decision to use Gerry Adams extensively in its poster campaign and media appearances, primarily at the expense of the southern candidates themselves, may also have created a sense among the electorate that this was a group of outsiders ambitious only to take over the state.
Adams also gave the impression that he had little grasp either of his own party's policy detail, nor the complex workings of the Irish economy. During the campaign he even admitted to having to bone up on economics at night. In effect the party's proposals for nationalisation and massive investment in the poorer areas of the Republic, though rarely explicitly outlined, may have entailed an abandonment of the Republic's Anglo economic model for the Nordic one, but without the roadmap. It steadfastly ignored the fact that most of the public tax take is currently being called directly into rolling out infrastructure just to try to keep up with the growth of the country's economy.
It's not as though the government was invulnerable to criticism. A whole series of major capital projects such as Dublin's new tramway system have come in massively over budget. The rapid expansion of Dublin's "exburbs" has left people with long and often uncomfortable journeys into work each day. And the health service is struggling to meet demand.
But as Olivia O'Leary pointed out on RTE last Monday, they are also glad they be commuting from Carlow and not having to emigrate to Australia. This generation of Irish people have children who have the economic choice to grow up and live at home. It is as genuinely historic as anything that has happened in Northern Ireland recently.
Paradoxically for a party founded with the explicit purpose of getting rid of "foreign" political influence on the island, in this election at least, it came across as foreign. And not simply because of Adams' northern accent. Sinn Féin's economic strategy, based on seemingly endless demands for public money from the UK treasury works well for it in the highly subsidised north, but translates into an independent sovereign state as basket case economics. In the aftermath, Adams was taunted relentlessly in the media about his political centre of gravity being Westminster, rather than in the Leinster House parliament in Dublin.
As Mark Hennessey explained in the Irish Times yesterday, Dublin's working classes are considerably more nuanced in their understanding of economics than the party gave them credit for:
In places such as Tallaght the working class has become middle class or at least possessed of middle-class aspirations. Jobs are more plentiful, mortgages secured. Some who voted for Sinn Féin before now have assets to protect.
On the plus side, there were some rises in the party's vote around the border areas. But even here there are elements that should worry party strategists. It suggests that while the party has a distinct appeal to the northern parts of the state, it has failed to take hold further south in areas like Wexford and Waterford. And, perhaps more worrying, the border counties are the last places in the Republic to feel the warm glow of the Celtic Tiger. As development moves northwards, the fear has to be that these too will fall to the canny charms of mainstream Dublin politics, and turn their backs on the would-be radicals of the north.
By the next election in 2011, Sinn Fein will need to have come to terms with the modern Ireland beyond their own British subsidised stronghold in Northern Ireland if they are to stand a chance of moving their all-island project further forward. But they will also need to come to terms with the fact that after generations of viewing their Unionist neighbours in Northern Ireland as being part of Ireland's "British problem", they must confront the fact that they are now viewed by many of their fellow citizens in the Republic as foreigners themselves.
commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/mick_fealty/2007/05/sinn_fein_and_the_failure_of_i.html
Gerry Adams now says that the general election in the Irish Republic was always going to be difficult for his Sinn Féin party. Yet, like any good boxing pro, he talked a good fight at the time. If he had doubts during the campaign, he didn't let it show.
In the event, the electorate largely returned to the two large populist parties of the southern state. Taoiseach Bertie Ahern's Fianna Fáil lost just two seats, and his opponent Enda Kenny's Fine Gael added 20 - mostly at the expense of independents and the smaller parties rather than the government.
Although Sinn Féin lost only one of its five seats, its ambition to double its tally and become a critical part of government never materialised. In fact they lost one of their two Dublin incumbents, and only retained the other up by a mere 69 votes. In real terms, they performed less well in the Republic than the tiny Alliance party in the Northern Ireland assembly elections in March.
However it is what Sinn Féin did not win that may hurt them most in the longer term. Their most prominent candidate, Mary Lou McDonald, who has featured in all campaigns north and south since she won a European seat in 2004 actually saw her vote fall in Dublin Central by 5.4%. Instead of building in the capital, where they had hoped for three gains, they are now hanging on by a very thin thread.
Liam Clarke in the Sunday Times offers a possible explanation:
"Instead of the five seats targeted in Dublin constituencies, one is the most they can hope for. They hoped for as many as 12 TDs but they will end up with less than they started with. The unstoppable Sinn Féin bandwagon, which is still supposed to deliver Irish unity by 2016, is off the tracks and needs a refit.
"Community workers in Dublin say Sinn Féin has lost some of its appeal in working-class communities.
"'The party is not as active in these areas as people would believe,' one former Sinn Féin activist said. 'They are no longer associated with the anti-drugs movement, or even most community groups. Gerry Adams rambles on about the scourge of heroin in the city but on the ground the Shinners are doing nothing about it.
"'They do a lot of talking but nobody believes a word they say round here. Local community groups see Sinn Féin in the same light as the other parties. They show up when they want something.'"
The party's decision to use Gerry Adams extensively in its poster campaign and media appearances, primarily at the expense of the southern candidates themselves, may also have created a sense among the electorate that this was a group of outsiders ambitious only to take over the state.
Adams also gave the impression that he had little grasp either of his own party's policy detail, nor the complex workings of the Irish economy. During the campaign he even admitted to having to bone up on economics at night. In effect the party's proposals for nationalisation and massive investment in the poorer areas of the Republic, though rarely explicitly outlined, may have entailed an abandonment of the Republic's Anglo economic model for the Nordic one, but without the roadmap. It steadfastly ignored the fact that most of the public tax take is currently being called directly into rolling out infrastructure just to try to keep up with the growth of the country's economy.
It's not as though the government was invulnerable to criticism. A whole series of major capital projects such as Dublin's new tramway system have come in massively over budget. The rapid expansion of Dublin's "exburbs" has left people with long and often uncomfortable journeys into work each day. And the health service is struggling to meet demand.
But as Olivia O'Leary pointed out on RTE last Monday, they are also glad they be commuting from Carlow and not having to emigrate to Australia. This generation of Irish people have children who have the economic choice to grow up and live at home. It is as genuinely historic as anything that has happened in Northern Ireland recently.
Paradoxically for a party founded with the explicit purpose of getting rid of "foreign" political influence on the island, in this election at least, it came across as foreign. And not simply because of Adams' northern accent. Sinn Féin's economic strategy, based on seemingly endless demands for public money from the UK treasury works well for it in the highly subsidised north, but translates into an independent sovereign state as basket case economics. In the aftermath, Adams was taunted relentlessly in the media about his political centre of gravity being Westminster, rather than in the Leinster House parliament in Dublin.
As Mark Hennessey explained in the Irish Times yesterday, Dublin's working classes are considerably more nuanced in their understanding of economics than the party gave them credit for:
In places such as Tallaght the working class has become middle class or at least possessed of middle-class aspirations. Jobs are more plentiful, mortgages secured. Some who voted for Sinn Féin before now have assets to protect.
On the plus side, there were some rises in the party's vote around the border areas. But even here there are elements that should worry party strategists. It suggests that while the party has a distinct appeal to the northern parts of the state, it has failed to take hold further south in areas like Wexford and Waterford. And, perhaps more worrying, the border counties are the last places in the Republic to feel the warm glow of the Celtic Tiger. As development moves northwards, the fear has to be that these too will fall to the canny charms of mainstream Dublin politics, and turn their backs on the would-be radicals of the north.
By the next election in 2011, Sinn Fein will need to have come to terms with the modern Ireland beyond their own British subsidised stronghold in Northern Ireland if they are to stand a chance of moving their all-island project further forward. But they will also need to come to terms with the fact that after generations of viewing their Unionist neighbours in Northern Ireland as being part of Ireland's "British problem", they must confront the fact that they are now viewed by many of their fellow citizens in the Republic as foreigners themselves.
commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/mick_fealty/2007/05/sinn_fein_and_the_failure_of_i.html
