Republican News · Thursday 23 May 2002

Election of the Rains sweeps old opposition away

BY MÍCHEÁL MacDONNCHA

The Greens and Sinn Féin have much in common in policy terms, notably on the EU and the Treaty of Nice. But the building of an alternative opposition not including Fine Gael would require Labour involvement

The General Election of 2002 will be remembered as the Election of the Rains when, despite torrential downpours all day, voters in the 26 Counties turned out to change the composition of the Dáil in a most unexpected way. For Sinn Féin, the Election of the Rains has been as important a milestone as the Election of the Snows in 1917, when Count Plunkett and his fellow republicans battled through drifts of snow to win the North Roscommon by-election. The result heralded a Sinn Féin landslide the following year.

It has been rightly said that the electorate changed the opposition, not the government. The result is an indictment of both Fine Gael and Labour. The real winners are Sinn Féin, the Greens and independents. But Sinn Féin is best placed to use its success. Only Sinn Féin has both the politics and the organisation to build from opposition and send its representation into double figures next time. Only Sinn Féin, as an all-Ireland party, can use its team of TDs to provide a new political dynamic on this island.

With two TDs in Dublin, two in the Border counties and one in Munster, Sinn Féin is poised to build strategically from a wide territorial base. With a strong and well-defined political appeal on both national self-determination and social and economic justice, the republican party can win a growing number of voters.

No one predicted the massacre of Fine Gael. Their Front Bench has been wrecked and they have only three seats in the whole of Dublin, just one ahead of Sinn Féin. The diverse fabric of Fine Gael has been torn apart. In rural Ireland their traditional big farmer support base has been undermined, as voters cross old party lines to support Fianna Fáil, the PDs or independents. Only in strongholds west of the Shannon and in Munster does the Blueshirt flag still fly. In urban Ireland, the middle-class support of Fine Gael has been eroded disastrously. Former Fine Gael voters or would-be voters, be they of conservative or liberal hue, can find what they want in Fianna Fáil and the PDs or in Labour and the Greens.

The Labour Party also had a bad result. They retained their number of seats but lost former leader Dick Spring, while current leader Ruairi Quinn had to battle for his seat. Almost alone among the media, An Phoblacht described the merger of Labour and Democratic Left as a funeral, not a wedding. And so it proved. The demise of DL did not strengthen Labour but opened up the field on the left, facilitating the entry of Sinn Féin and the Greens. Some commentators have said that Labour was mistaken in not entering a pre-election pact with Fine Gael. Such a pact would likely only have benefited Fine Gael, perhaps saving some of their seats but not averting disaster. And Labour would have been tied to a sinking ship.

The reality is that the potential seat gains for Labour were lost to Sinn Féin and the Greens. If you total the number of seats won by those three parties you get 32 - just one short of the number of seats won by Labour in the 'Spring tide' election of 1992. Looked at another way, the same statistic is a further cause of depression for Fine Gael, since they are now outnumbered by the other opposition parties, and that's not even counting the independents.

That key number also points to the realignment in politics. The Greens and Sinn Féin have much in common in policy terms, notably on the EU and the Treaty of Nice. But the building of an alternative opposition not including Fine Gael would require Labour involvement. That poses a dilemma for Labour. If they continue their support for the Nice Treaty and campaign for a Yes vote in the autumn, they will certainly lose further support. Many within Labour will be unwilling to participate in the travesty of democracy that a re-run of the same Nice Treaty would represent.

Meanwhile, the coalition mating dance has begun. Mary Harney did a little 'hard to get' routine on Tuesday when she said some of her eight new TDs would prefer not to go into government. Don't believe a word of it. The PDs are a party of careerist office-holders. They have no real organisation on the ground and rely on their high media profile to win votes. Deprived of the oxygen of governmental office, they wither. Bertie Ahern would much rather have the PDs as a coalition mudguard than a howling opposition with Michael McDowell in full cry. The independents are too diverse and too demanding to deal with. The PDs offer stability and policy compatibility. They can be blamed for the harsh decisions of the incoming government. They can pose as the moral guardians.

Thus, in the otherwise radically changed Irish political landscape, the strange symbiotic relationship between Fianna Fáil and the PDs will continue, rather like one of those birds that crocodiles allow to pick their teeth.