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Home Page > Blogs > News blogs > Periscope > Why Micheal D.Higgins will stand apart as Irish president ---A perfect president for the important 1916 centenary

Periscope by Niall O'Dowd

Why Micheal D.Higgins will stand apart as Irish president ---A perfect president for the important 1916 centenary

Posted on Saturday, October 29, 2011 at 09:12 PM

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The ghosts of the men and women of 1916 will sleep easier this Halloween weekend knowing that Michael D. Higgins is the president who will preside over the centenary of the Easter Rising in 2016.

The newly elected president of Ireland is a poet like Padraig Pearse and Joseph Plunkett two of the signatories of the famous proclamation, the founding document of the Irish state.

He is a leading Labor figure like a third, James Connolly and the fact that he attained power with a powerful assist from Sinn Fein would no doubt be of great interest to that parties founders.

He certainly has a track record in government that entitles him to stand apart.

When Minister for Arts and Culture he ended Section 31 the odious legislation that prevented Sinn Fein from being heard on the Irish airwaves during much of The Troubles.

He also established TG4, the All-Irish language television station that has been an outstanding success since it was established in 1996.

A fluent speaker of Gaelic he was the only candidate of the seven who ran who was able to converse in it.

In addition he reinvigorated the Irish Film Board leading to a glorious era when Irish film was constantly in the forefront of Oscar races and underwent a complete renaissance.

In person Higgins is an engaging character, able and willing to discuss in his very distinctive Clare accent, the matters of the day.

I don’t know him that well but have always found him a man with a deep sense of the Diaspora and the issues that confront the Irish abroad.

His election came after the Irish electorate at the last minute decided that steady hand rather than a new beginning was the better choice.

Sean Gallagher looked home and hosed. A former reality TV star and businessman he was as unalike Higgins as any two contenders could be.

But he was undermined by a dreadful gaffe on the last television debate when his very character came into question and he was not able to dispense with the barrage of late accusations about his ties to money men and the failed policies of Fianna Fail.

At the last second the voters switched to Higgins, the mercurial 70-year-old who was always going to be the safe pair of hands.

If his speech after he was elected is any barometer he will be that and more.

He is a passionate Irishman, an idealist and a proponent of the less well off in society, a man who came from a tough background himself who was literally farmed out to relatives at a young age because of his father’s alcoholism.

In this day and age Ireland needs a leader like that, a man with a common touch.

Here’s to his success.

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35 comments

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abhainn | Nov 03, 2011, 07:34 PM EDT

CanadianPat, it is not petty to correct an error. The Irish people call their language Irish, when speaking English. In Irish itself, the language is called Gaeilge, and not as you consistently misspell it. We do not refer to Irish as Gaelic. We do say Gaeilge, but only when speaking Irish itself. You should leave such distinctions to people who understand them.

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jacersagain | Nov 02, 2011, 04:33 PM EDT

BTW... I see the Brit think Michael D’s poetry is rubbish. Quote from The Guardian newspaper‘s journalist “An anonymous report of a poetry reading Higgins gave in 2007 for the Greek-Irish society ended with the following "… always he would add not as a politician, but as a poet he would know immediately like Michael Longley, Seamus Heaney or Brendan Keneally 'when a poem is made'." Not only does Higgins not know when a poem is made, it's almost sacrilegious to mention him alongside Irish poets who actually do make decent poems. The Northern Irish poets have a phrase for rubbish poetry... I first heard it from Longley himself, though I believe he said he got it from Frank Ormsby: mad-dog-shtie”. (Pardon spelling.)

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jacersagain | Nov 02, 2011, 04:29 PM EDT

I got good belly laughs from thesavageirish and RedBranch comments. Brolaur, you’re right if the Welsh got in to lead w/ their spellings, we’d run out of ink in no time. I think I’d stick w/ abbreviations like Clanfairgo..gotcha.

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Brolaur | Nov 02, 2011, 11:31 AM EDT

Well said "the savageirish". Great sense of humour and well done in spelling it correctly. The name would be longer than most of our station platforms.

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RedBranch | Nov 01, 2011, 05:42 PM EDT

Stáit Aontaithe na gCeltígh. Its got a ring to it. Of course Ulster would immediately set up the Second Presbyterian Stáit Aontaithe na gCeltígh, but we'd still be all in it together.

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thesavageirish | Nov 01, 2011, 01:05 AM EDT

Oh! and by the way Cindy, congratulations!

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thesavageirish | Nov 01, 2011, 12:36 AM EDT

And sure why not? A Confederacy of Celts. I'm all for it as long as the Welsh aren't put in charge of renaming any train stations....Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.

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jacersagain | Oct 31, 2011, 07:03 PM EDT

Hmmmmmm... I didn’t realise the import of my suggestion there in my last post. Why not, given the Scottish Parliament’s determination to “go it alone”, pushing for independence from top-heavy English-government, why don’t they, and us Irish and Welsh, Bretons and Cornies take it one more step further and form our own Celtic nation... let’s call it “Stáit Aontaithe na gCeltígh”. United States of Celtia (other suggestions?). And us all say “vec youze” (ok, RedBranch, you got me and I got you) to the EU. Mind’ya, if that were to happen, an’ we all became independent of England and its common weals, da next ting you’ll know is the Norse people wud be invading us all over again. It takes an intelligent mind to put suggestions to the only Celtic President in the world to make it work, even if he’s a romantic poet. Then all the Celtic emigrants will return to their native lands, proudly.

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jacersagain | Oct 31, 2011, 06:52 PM EDT

Mind, ye know savageirish... I quite agree with you there on recognising destruction of a language. I worked for some time on the Scottish island of Stornaway and met people there who spoke Gaelic language. We played a simple game to find commonality between my Irish Gaelic and their Scottish Gaelic. We counted from 1 to 10 in our own language at the same time (I played the same game with Welsh people) – Éin (or Aon), Dó, Trí etc... Except for a few numbers - five, six, nine and ten - there was little difference in our joint pronunciations. (The P’s and the Q’s). There are Pan-Queltic (oops!... bluddy dam mis-typo!) gatherings held occasionally (including Irish, Scots, Bretons, Welsh and Corny people (how other do you describe people from Cornwall? Corny or Corn Wellies?) where I hear the craic is almighty but I’ve never attended one. But my Stornawayan (Cor! did I really invent a new word?) Scotia Gaelic friend did... and she said that the sounds of songs, story-telling, poetry and music were massively common between all the Celts attending. Maybe we’re getting it wrong calling the Irish Diaspora by that name... why not just simply... Celts?

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thesavageirish | Oct 31, 2011, 11:52 AM EDT

On a further note it would not be a bad idea for the scots to familiarize themselves with the destruction of language in Ireland and the irish to do the same by being aware of the scottish history of the highland clearances. Thank god we have an interested scholar in the Aras. Go Micheal D!

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thesavageirish | Oct 31, 2011, 11:44 AM EDT

Oh for the love a Lugh! Could you mind your Ps and Qs? What codology on philology. There's ample evidence extant, from Caesars 'BelloGallico' to Ptolemeys cartography that portray the irish as the 'scotti'. The kingdom of Dal Riata of which reached it's zenith in the 5th century in western Scotland is the origin of the current nomenclature, i.e. where the scotti were! Yes there are divergenges in the language, even Munster irish has it's differences from Connaught irish and that which is still spoken on the islands. Goidelic, gaelic, gaeilge are all similar terms for the same family. Q Celtic is the association of languages that include all irish,scots, manx and iberian. P Celtic is associated with brythonic, gallic and likely galatian (the turkish one). Whatever you might say about the constitution Gaelic is not specifically a language but also a term to refer to things Gael, gaelic football, gaelic games, gaelic reveival. It may be hard to accept that the irish and the scots are of the same stock but in the larger picture celtic culture spread from the western isles to eastern Turkey and beyond. Even Alexander the Great had celtic mercenaries with him travelling further east. About time we all appreciated our long and ancient interconnectedness and move forward. No need to be such abhainn-nut about it. Next you'll be telling me Etruscan falls in the family of celtic languages................oh wait a minute.

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RedBranch | Oct 31, 2011, 11:37 AM EDT

jacersagain, Love the 'veni, vidi, vekit' Although 'fekit' might have been more what they were thinking...Canadian Pat, you rumbled me on my squinty eyed Pearse juvenilia, but not strangely enough on RtHon title for Bobby Sands which was equally intended as 'juvenilia'. An Amazon search on the poetry of.. may return some interesting numbers to support my original assertion.

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Newrone | Oct 30, 2011, 10:04 PM EDT

I'm impressed. Good luck President Michael D.

And thanks Ciaran for the revision of the context & etymology of Gaeilge. I really had thought that it was all common knowledge to anyone with Irish roots. (It's a bit like hearing Americans unflinchingly referring to the UK as "England"!) As for the article, I get the impression some of these texts are churned out in 5 minutes, from the extent of misspellings, punctuation mistakes & incongruities strewn throughout them. Niall?

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jacersagain | Oct 30, 2011, 09:25 PM EDT

Apologies to all readers... Pardon my lack of translation of the Latin-Romans coming to Ireland – it should have read: "they came (veni) they saw (vici) and didn’t bother (vekit)".

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stanJames | Oct 30, 2011, 09:00 PM EDT

I'm thrilled that Higgins will be the president. Yes, I kind of preferred Norris, perhaps as more of a slap in the face to the church of the endless hidden molestation of children worldwide. But Higgins is a liberal progressive. He will in so many areas try and move the country forward. Countering the church, and what I read of the Pope, who basically wants to move the country back to before Vatican II etc the Popes fears are simple to under stand - Once the people move forward and begin to change, the whole matter of faith - just a belief, repeat belief in the supernatural will come into question. Annd much of the dogma and doctrine of the church will be called into question. I, and I'm sure most Irelanders do not want to live in the 4th century of the church. Women second class citizens, gays castigated, their humanity demonized, possibly a new dark ages of the horrible past. What Pope Benedict misses seems to be that catholic Europe is now all but an oxymoron. Through out most of W. Europe, only about 15% , or less of the people go to church on any regular basis. The day will come when Benedict passes from the scene but we must be forever vigilant. Benedict has stuffed the Curia with extremists like himself. As long as the people never forget what Benedict is all about - one man rule (like most all tyrannies) we will be safe. If we are not forever vigilant, it could be back to the New, anything but Holy Inquisition. Which btw didnt end in spain until about 1830.

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