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What went wrong for the Shinners?
Deaglán de Bréadun on why Sinn Féin did so badly in the Southern election. Was it just Gerry Adams’ ignorance on economic issues? Or is this the end of the republican surge?
Three are times when the big battalions engage on the battlefield and
the smaller factions get sidelined. So it was with the general election
in the South. All eyes were focused on the presidential-style contest
between Fianna Fail’s Bertie Ahern and his Opposition counterpart Enda
Kenny of Fine Gael. When the votes were counted, the minority
Progressive Democrats were decimated, the Socialist Party lost its only
TD and the Green Party barely held onto its total of six seats in the
Dail.
Sinn Fein also sustained serious damage and this became one of the
main news stories of the election. Widely expected to make substantial
gains, perhaps doubling its representation from five to ten TDs, the
party ended up losing the seat held by Sean Crowe in Dublin South-West
and limping back with only four TDs in the new Dail.
It was a significant setback to Sinn Fein's party's ambitions in the
South and a blow also to the peace process in the North. No doubt the
dissidents and doubters were whooping it up, telling their erstwhile
comrades, “I told you so.”
The decline of the PDs was widely anticipated but the opinion polls
indicated that the Greens and Sinn Fein would do well. Certainly there
was no expectation that Crowe would lose out. Until now, it was a
"given" in contemporary Irish politics that when a seat went to Sinn
Fein, it stayed with Sinn Fein.
Apart from the dominance of the two main parties, what else went wrong
for the "Shinners"? First of all, the decision by the Taoiseach to call
the election on a Sunday morning seemed to catch Sinn Fein napping.
Other parties were geared up and ready for the off, e.g., Labour leader
Pat Rabbitte led a high-profile walkabout on Dublin's Grafton Street.
For its part, Sinn Fein held a low-key press conference on workers'
rights, to coincide with Dublin's May Day march. No doubt the party's
northern wing was pre-occupied with the forthcoming Big Day at Stormont
on May 8th. But it meant Sinn Fein was starting from behind in the race
for power and the coverage inevitably reflected that.
The party's manifesto was launched later than others, as if nothing
could be allowed to distract from the Stormont event. The document
itself had a curiously old-fashioned air and Sinn Fein’s economic
policies were consistently dismissed as “hard left” by their opponents.
The party is very definitely on the left -- where a lot of parties and
individuals are focussing on a narrow range of voters -- and seems to
have abandoned other shades of the political spectrum to Fianna Fail
and Fine Gael.
It has to be admitted that traditional state-led socialist or
nationalist economics did not create the Celtic Tiger. The South's
openness to foreign investment and its tiny rate of corporation tax
were a major factor. Ireland is one of the most globalised economies in
the world. Ditching the old "Ourselves Alone/Sinn Fein" ideology of
protectionism looks, at least for the present, like the best thing we
ever did.
Sinn Fein was all over the place on corporation tax. The party
formerly advocated a five per cent increase in the current rate, from
12.5 up to 17.5 per cent. It was difficult to get a straight answer to
the question as to whether this policy still stood, but it didn't
appear in the manifesto and seemed to have been quietly dropped.
At a time when parties in the North, including Sinn Fein, are trying
to secured cuts in the corporation tax rate, it seemed odd to be
seeking an increase in the South. Besides, an increase like that would
almost certainly lead to widespread plant closures and large-scale
job-losses.
Meanwhile, other countries are eyeing our corporation tax-rate with
great envy and there are moves afoot in Brussels which would undermine
the advantage Ireland currently enjoys. It's an issue of sovereignty
and the old political masters in Fianna Fail presented themselves as
the only party that could be relied upon to fight the good fight on
this issue. Sinn Fein, which is supposed to have sovereignty as its
core-value, just didn’t seem to get it.
Gerry Adams led the Sinn Fein campaign in the South. He's an
impressive operator in the Northern context and on the international
stage, but in this election he didn’t come across well. Having
performed poorly in television interviews after the ardfheis last
March, he badly needed to be briefed on various aspects of Southern
politics and economics in the meantime. It was evident from his
performance in a major TV debate between leaders of the smaller parties
in the election that this hadn’t happened.
Sinn Fein's chief standard-bearer in the South, Mary Lou McDonald was
considered a racing certainty for a Dail seat in Dublin Central.
Photographed at the count, she looked grief-stricken at her shock
defeat. Observers said she was the wrong person to run in such a
working-class constituency. Be that as it may, her defeat was a big
setback for the Sinn Fein project. Likewise the failure to capture new
seats in other constituencies where clean-cut young candidates were set
to be the wave of Sinn Fein's future.
So what happens next? Sinn Fein has four TDs out of a total 166
members in the Dail. At time of writing, coalition arrangements are
being discussed and, although Sinn Fein involvement cannot be entirely
ruled out, it seems highly unlikely.
There may not be another general election for five years. At the
moment and for the foreseeable future, voters in the South are not
receptive to the Sinn Fein brand of politics. They seem to find it all
a little too slick, pre-packaged and controlled. There is also a fair
degree of unspoken nervousness about the republicans, given their
paramilitary history.
If it is to have any chance in future elections, the party needs to go
back to the drawing-board, do some serious work on its policies, ditch
some of the ideological trappings and start from where the people are,
rather than where Sinn Fein thinks they should be.
Deaglan de Breadun is Political Correspondent and former Northern
Editor of The Irish Times. His book on the Good Friday Agreement,
entitled "The Far Side of Revenge", is published by Collins Press,
Cork.
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