Republican News · Thursday 13 March 1997

[An Phoblacht]

Ahern blames the victims

Electoral intervention slammed

BY NEIL FORDE

If he (Ahern) wishes to intervene in the six-county elections in a real way Fianna Fáil should stand candidates. Otherwise he should trust in the intelligence and judgement of the voters

Gerry Adams responds to Bertie Ahern

``It is not my role to influence electors elsewhere to vote for one party or another''. This was the starting point for a journey through the bizarre logic of Fianna Fáil leader Bertie Ahern last week. Ahern was writing in the Irish News and was, according to the paper, spelling out his view on ``the way forward, politically, for peace''.

Ahern's tract was in fact a voting guide for the Six-County and British voters. He urged ``the voters of Northern Ireland to recognise that they have people power and to exercise it decisively''. In the case of the nationalist electorate he argued that ``Their expectations were disappointed'' in last year's Forum elections.and that this ``should not be allowed happen again''.

The net outcome of Ahern's analysis was summed up in the Irish News front page headline the same day. It proclaimed ``Tell Sinn Féin no ceasefire no vote''.

This unwarranted intervention was tackled head on by Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams. He said ``If he (Ahern) wishes to intervene in the six-county elections in a real way Fianna Fáil should stand candidates. Otherwise he should trust in the intelligence and judgement of the voters to make up their own minds in an informed manner''.

Bertie's Ahern's voting intervention was not the only bizarre aspect of the article. It was in fact littered with references to a picture of the political environment in Ireland that differs from the real Ireland that we all actually live in.

Ahern opened his article berating voters for their ``fatalistic acceptance about the powerlessness of the people in a democracy''. The crime of the Six County voters was accepting that ``there can be no progress on peace in the north until after the elections''.

``Any party in other jurisdictions who suggested for months in advance that nothing could be done about the most serious problem facing society until after an election would get very short shrift from the voters''.

Here then is a serious problem with Ahern's analysis. He lays the blame for political failure with its victims not its perpetrators. He seems to overlook the fact that even though the voters of the Six Counties may have participated in 21 elections over the past 25 years there are in fact no democratic structures in the Six Counties. Even within the relatively powerless district councils discrimination and anti-democratic practices are rife.

Bertie Ahern doesn't seem to realise that the Six Counties is not a democracy. With its own parliament it twisted the electoral system and created a unionist hegemony. With direct rule this has been perpetuated by the British Government. The Six-County electorate has been condemned to a political limbo. Does he not realise that the consequences of this lack of democracy is in fact one of the core factors in the conflict in Ireland today?

Ahern ignores this reality and instead tells the Irish News readers of how the coming Leinster House elections are a stimulus to the coalition government who are dealing with a whole range of pressing matters, albeit belatedly.

So this is how democracy will work if we ever have it on an all-Ireland basis. It will only be the prospect of electoral pressure that coerces a government into action. This is a very narrow view of representative democracy and clearly not a model to aspire to.

Indeed, the prospect of a coming election may have been the motivation behind Bertie's recent outbursts.

We find Ahern also turning to the issue of the Stormont talks. He says ``more progress should have been demanded in the talks process before they were adjourned''. He brings up the failed Brooke/Mayhew talks which collapsed in 1992 and in which Sinn Féin took no part. Ahern says that they did not reconvene for four years.

He makes no reference to the fact that it was Sinn Féin's programme to create a lasting peace that generated the much need impetus to pull away from the failure of 1992 and into a real inclusive talks process.

Ahern doesn't seem to recognise either that the 1996 Stormont talks were also doomed to failure for the very reason that the 1992 talks failed, because the combined unionists created the impasses and the collapses all with the aid of the British Government while a succession of Dublin Governments were unable or unwilling to make the necessary interventions to secure real progress towards real talks. Bertie would do better to consider those realities before he berates the voters.

Bertie Ahern has set out a guide for the Six-County voter and for British voters but perhaps he should have looked closer to home. He has been on many occasions a positive voice in the political void created by the British Government-inspired collapse of the peace process.

Perhaps he should set out publicly the criteria he thinks the incoming Dublin Government will apply to restart the peace process. He should tell us now how he will deal with a dithering backtracking British Government. How will be tackle unionist belligerence and discrimination in a talks process.?

Fianna Fáil's last interjection in Six-County elections came in 1933 when Eamon de Valera was elected a Stormont MP for South Down. Dev never took his seat and for nearly 40 years Fianna Fáil turned their back on the Six Counties. The aftermath of the arms trial brought another 20 years of inaction. Albert Reynolds and Bertie Ahern have broken that mould. It would be very sad if Fianna Fáil after all the trauma of the last four years were to get it wrong again.

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