Irish election results: Dawning of a new day in Ireland

One of the first marching songs generations of Irish kids learned in school was “The Dawning of the Day.”  

Well, a new day was dawning for Ireland this week as the implication of the election results sank in not only for the political parties, but for ordinary people across the country. 

As we predicted in this column two weeks ago, the results of this election have changed the fundamentals of Irish party politics for decades to come.  Last Friday's vote was not an election for seats in the Dail (Irish parliament).  The present government has a majority of seats in the Dail and so it can stay in power until the next general election in 2012, if it can last that long without disintegrating.   

This election was for seats in the European Parliament and on local councils all over the country, and it also included two by-elections to fill Dail seats left vacant by the death of two politicians.  

But it was a national election and so it does give us a telling picture of  how much support the various political parties have at present, and what share of the national vote they might get in a general election for the Dail. 

And on that basis, the election results have been an absolute disaster for Fianna Fail and the Green Party, the partners in the present coalition government. If they were repeated in a general election the Greens would be wiped out and Fianna Fail, by far the most dominant political party in Ireland for decades, would be reduced to a secondary role.

In that sense it really is the dawning of a new day here.  Somehow, we have to get our heads around the idea that this will be a new Ireland in which Fine Gael will be the  largest party, and in which Fianna Fail's natural place will be in opposition instead of in power.  The mighty have fallen.  

Fine Gael evolved from Cumann na nGaedhael, the pro-Treaty section of Sinn Fein that effectively established the new state when Ireland achieved independence. 

It ran Ireland for the first decade until the anti-Treaty side evolved into the Fianna Fail political party and then won power in 1932 under de Valera, having accepted the reality of a 26-county state.  And Fianna Fail, apart from a few years here and there, have been in power ever since.

So the transformation we are seeing now is immense.  In a way the country is going back to its roots, in the sense that the party philosophy which established the new state is being restored to its former dominant position. 

It was the leaders in that tradition who helped the country make the very difficult transition from civil war to democracy and law and order, and who put the shaky finances of the new state on a firm footing and began to build the country with major investments in agriculture, electricity generation and food processing. 

Given the enormous economic problems we now face, maybe we should not be so surprised that Fine Gael's time has come again.  It's back to the future.

Mind you, there are many people in Fianna Fail who still don't get it.  They are clinging to the belief that this election result is a blip, and that if they hang in there in the Dail they could recover by the time a general election has to be held in three years. 

But looking at the catastrophic decline in Fianna Fail support in this election, this seems to be wishful thinking of the most foolish kind.  Even if they could hang in there with the Greens -- and that's a tall order given the level of panic and angst in that party which could pull out of government any time -- any objective assessment must be that it will be impossible for Fianna Fail to win the next general election.   The level of naked hatred for Fianna Fail out there is unprecedented and is unlikely to be dissipated any time soon. 

That is even more true because of the incredibly difficult situation the government faces.  Not only will they not have the means to buy off the electorate over the next two or three years (the traditional Fianna Fail route to power), but even doing the minimum necessary for the economy is going to make them even more unpopular.  

An even harsher budget than the last one is on the cards for the end of this year, with further cuts in pay, state services and the general standard of living.

The problem facing Fianna Fail right now is twofold.  Firstly, the public blames the party for being in league with the big developers and the bankers and for fueling the building bubble that got us into the present mess. 

Secondly, even though Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Brian Cowen seems determined to turn over a new leaf in Fianna Fail and genuinely tackle the problems, the public has completely lost confidence in the party.  

As one newspaper here put it, the voters have no faith in the government's handling of the financial and economic crisis, and they do not believe the implausible assertion that the causes of the crisis were international and not domestic.

What most voters want now is revenge on the Fianna Fail-led governments which got us into this situation, and they want a different kind of government to lead us out of the mess.  It comes down to one word -- trust.  The voters don't trust Fianna Fail any more.  

One example of this was the fate of former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern's brother Maurice, whose share of the local election vote in Bertie's area for a seat on Dublin City Council was a miserable 12%, even though Bertie was out canvassing hard for him, and the legendary Bertie machine was organizing the campaign. 

This was decimation -- a real humiliation for Bertie's once powerful organization, and it was symptomatic of what was happening to Fianna Fail across the country. 

Apart from having it in for Fianna Fail, of course, there is also an element of the voters desperately looking for an easy way out.  Many of them still don't realize that there isn't one. 

Nor is it clear that a new government led by Fine Gael will be any better.  Fine Gael may have triumphed, but their leader Enda Kenny does not inspire confidence.  And their policies on the economy are not significantly different from Fianna Fail, except that they think they can administer the bitter medicine better.

Another unknown in all this is the influence the Labor Party will have, given how well they did in the election. They would be a major player in a coalition government with Fine Gael, and the economic policies of the two parties are poles apart.  

Labor, for example, thinks all the banks should be nationalized.  And since a lot of their support comes from trade union members in the public service, they are opposed to almost all the cuts in pay and benefits for our bloated state sector. 

The last thing the country needs would be a compromise between Labor's economic policies and those of Fine Gael.  That would be a recipe for disaster. 

So far all Labor has done is offer platitudes rather than policies.  They want massive state investment, and they want state services maintained, but they won't (or can't) say where the money will come from. 

So if Fine Gael and Labor were to form the next government, we don't know what they would do about the banks or the public finances or the economic slump here. Earlier last week official figures were published which showed that unemployment has now passed 400,000 here and is still rising, with the possibility that half a million could be out of work by next year.  

To solve that kind of problem, we need more than a change of faces in government.