This article titled “Irish election: a daunting task for Enda Kenny” was written by Michael White in Dublin, for guardian.co.uk on Sunday 27th February 2011 15.43 UTC
When Enda Kenny began constructing a coalition to run the most embattled government in Europe he did so without knowing exactly how many MPs his Fine Gael party and its rivals will each have in the new Dail – almost 48 hours after polls closed in Ireland’s watershed general election.
As Labour, Sinn Féin and the independent left all clocked up record gains, analysts were quick to predict the belated end of the archaic civil war feud between Fine Gael and the now-routed Fianna Fáil – which has dominated the republic’s politics since the 1920s – and the emergence of a more normal left-right model. But Ireland’s economic crisis will take priority over the chance of reform, the more so because, in decisively rejecting Fianna Fáil, Irish voters have come close to rejecting the EU and IMF’s €85 bn (£73bn) package.
With allocation of the final seats going to 13 counts or more under Ireland’s much-loved single transferable vote (STV) system, politicians and their constituents are normally happy to sit back and enjoy the nail-biting and bickering, a familiar part of the process for 90 years. In a few seats it will continue on Monday – and beyond, perhaps to court.
Compared with sudden-death results in the average late-night count under Britain’s first-past-the-post (FPTP) system, an Irish election count is like watching paint dry. The important difference is that, while it dries, the painters – activists from all the parties who attend the count – are busy fighting over the paint pot and brushes.
In the 43 multi-member constituencies across the country, activists known as “tallymen” and women stand on the other side of the tables where officials sort and count ballot papers. Carrying each candidate’s photo in this highly personalised system, ballot papers can be nearly two feet long. Some voters express a dozen or more preferences, numbering their papers 1-2-3-4. A jumble of crosses and ticks can make them invalid.
Tallymen are restrained by crowd barriers and must not enter the officials “corral.” But when they see something they don’t like, they say so. A spoiled ballot paper that should have been counted (unless it favoured a rival party), or a paper placed on the pile of first preferences for Labour’s Eric Byrne (eventual loser in an eight-day recount back in 2002) instead of Fine Gael’s Catherine Byrne, produces cries of “that’s wrong” or “that voter’s intentions are quite clear”.
Only when the contest gets down to the “bear pit” stage, where tallymen fight over every “transfer” – votes reallocated for 2nd or even 8th preference – to win the last available seat, do tempers fray. Dublin SW’s 13th count finally ended at 6.30 am on Sunday when Sinn Féin and an independent joined two Labour and two Fine Gaels in the 166-seat Dail. As elsewhere, the outgoing Fianna Fáil regime was wiped out.
Despite widespread anger and despair at the clannish political culture and 2008 bank bust it has fostered, Irish voters seem to love STV. As six huge constituencies were being counted at the Royal Dublin Society’s cavernous exhibition centre this weekend, many urged Britons to take the plunge at the UK’s AV referendum on 5 May. Ireland’s own president is elected on AV, a simpler, less proportional system than STV.
“You don’t have to be 18 to be a tallyman. I’ve been doing this since I was 9,” says Karl Rock, 37, who has the very modern Irish career of tax consultant and is backing Catherine Byrne, who once beat him to a council seat (both Byrnes won in Dublin South Central this time). “Political anoraks love PR voting, it’s their meat and potatoes,” explains another activist watching the count. “This is proper democracy, you can see the votes literally laid out on the table, how people vote, how their second preferences transfer,” says a third.
But Enda Kenny, whom the Dail will formally elect as the new Taoiseach on 9 March, has a timetable that does not allow for protracted coalition negotiations, let alone for tallyman tales. Since the bank bust of 2008, Ireland has acquired crippling debts to the EU and IMF which kept its ATM machines open, but may yet bankrupt it.
With a vital EU summit due on 24 and 25 March, Kenny must either cut a deal with Labour – now the second largest party– or risk going it alone with the help of sympathetic independents who may give him greater freedom of manoeuvre to slash the deficit more than Labour deems wise. Last night he was still being pulled both ways with new TD Shane Ross, an ex-stockbroker, columnist and ex-senator, offering an 8-strong block of independents as the alternative to Labour – if the maths work.
Either way Kenny must impress his foreign creditors with the stability and determination of his team, while also being tough enough to argue that reducing the penal 6% rate of interest on Dublin’s borrowing is not enough. It is a daunting task for the 57-year-old Taoiseach, a TD since 1975 – four times as long as David Cameron’s apprenticeship – but only briefly ever a minister.
Many voters fear the ex-teacher from Mayo on the Atlantic coast, who narrowly fought off a leadership coup last year, is not up to it. He will argue that Ireland must be part of a wider EU renegotiation that also eases the cost-cutting austerity that countries like Germany have imposed on the eurozone’s debtors. So far Brussels says no, but Ireland’s election, the eurozone’s first post-crisis test, is being monitored closely in southern Europe. And after the old government’s disastrous attempt to deny it was engaged in any bailout talks, Kenny will have to negotiate openly to keep voters on board.
Such calculations were briefly submerged during the ritual drama of this weekend’s count. It confirmed the spectacular collapse of Ireland’s dominant party, Fianna Fáil, from 41% to 17% – its Dail seats reduced to a likely 18 – leaving the middle class, moderately conservative Fine Gael to become the largest party for the first time with about 78 – five short of an outright Dail majority.
Potentially as significant as the voter switch between the two old civil war rivals was the emergence of the strongest vote for anti-establishment independent candidates and left-leaning parties. This was disaffected voters’ answer to the bank bust’s dramatic exposure of corrupt, cronyist and incompetent political and financial management, which also fuelled a spectacular property bubble and crash.
Strongest in Dublin itself, Labour, which Fine Gael successfully labelled the “high tax” party, was also heading for a record 38 seats – with its leader Eamon Gilmore set to become deputy PM, or Tánaiste. As the Greens, Fianna Fáil’s tainted coalition partners until Christmas, crashed to oblivion, the United Left Alliance (ULA) and other independents, including local champions, were hoping for around 20 seats.
In the populist backlash against the political elite, Sinn Féin also had a good election. Despite Gerry Adams’s inept performance on key economic issues and rival efforts to tar him with past murders and the IRA’s Gaddafi links, the Sinn Féin president topped the poll in the border seat of Louth – and will now move there from Belfast. As Sinn Féin tripled its seats to around 14, Adams, still toxic to mainstream Irish parties, will be joined by a younger generation of TDs, untainted by the Troubles. They will claim they are the truly Irish party – from Antrim to Cork – and thereby expand their appeal to working class voters in Northern Ireland in May’s local elections.
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