{"id":112846,"date":"2025-10-10T07:12:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-10T07:12:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/112846\/"},"modified":"2025-10-10T07:12:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T07:12:07","slug":"this-presidential-election-could-be-about-to-get-even-weirder-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/112846\/","title":{"rendered":"This presidential election could be about to get even weirder \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

If Miche\u00e1l Martin<\/a> had picked himself to be the candidate<\/a> he would have won. But Ireland\u2019s most popular party leader has never wanted to be the President. His highest ambition always was to be the Taoiseach, and he is not ready to give it up. So he looked in the mirror and decided: what Fianna F\u00e1il<\/a> desperately needs is a mini-me. Thus Jim Gavin<\/a> grinned down from the campaign lamp-posts. Balding and bright-eyed, there was something vaguely familiar about him though most people were asking: Jim who? Alas, when the candidate spoke, he had none of Martin\u2019s conviction. There was only one way this was going to end. In tears.<\/p>\n

That came to pass on Sunday night when the former Dubs manager dramatically stopped his election campaign after failing to come clean to both Fianna F\u00e1il and the electorate about a 15-year-old debt of \u20ac3,300 he owed a former tenant of his unregistered rental apartment. (Gavin\u2019s solicitors said there were \u201cinaccuracies\u201d in the former tenant, Niall Donald\u2019s account, but have not disclosed what they are.)<\/p>\n

Gavin departed the campaign trailing leggedy-last in that day\u2019s Ireland Thinks\/Sunday Independent opinion poll. For some in Fianna F\u00e1il, the greatest pity is that Martin could be coasting to \u00c1ras an Uachtar\u00e1in now after his 35-year career in Leinster House. Superman\u2019s creators could not have written a more splendid epic than our hero valiantly dragging his party back from the brink of annihilation before retiring to his happy-ever-after in the big house. Instead the knives are out.<\/p>\n

Come January, Martin will have been Fianna F\u00e1il\u2019s leader for 15 years. By recent French attrition rates for prime ministers<\/a>, that is an eternity. He owes his longevity to steely perseverance and the acknowledgment, even by his detractors, that he has been the party\u2019s best asset. His reputation as \u201ca decent man\u201d helped rehabilitate it after the sleazy years of tribunal revelations and the Fianna F\u00e1il tent. Yet, despite miraculously returning to the D\u00e1il last year as the biggest party for the first time since 2011, Fianna F\u00e1il\u2019s usual malcontents have been waiting for him in the long grass.<\/p>\n

Now they are joined by fresh recruits. By all accounts, the Taoiseach was emotionally contrite at the parliamentary party meeting<\/a> on Wednesday night for choosing Gavin. Consequently, a semblance of peace has broken out in the ranks but it smacks of a temporary detente. On the day of the meeting, Jim O\u2019Callaghan<\/a>, the Minister for Justice who is regarded as Martin\u2019s main rival for the leadership, confirmed he aspires to the role. His prospects have been enhanced by the Gavin fiasco. <\/p>\n

Martin has managed to alienate two sizeable factions within the party. His dismissal of former taoiseach Bertie Ahern<\/a>\u2019s approaches to him seeking the election nomination and his opposition to Billy Kelleher<\/a>\u2019s pitch for the candidacy have brought a whole new canteen of knives to the table. Some of those wielding them were once Martin\u2019s friends.<\/p>\n

As Fianna F\u00e1il\u2019s health spokesman, Kelleher was a significant influence in changing the leader\u2019s erstwhile anti-abortion position when he made a seminal D\u00e1il speech advocating the repeal of the Eighth Amendment in 2018. Kelleher got 29 votes in the parliamentary party\u2019s secret ballot to select its presidential candidate, just 12 fewer than Gavin, the leader\u2019s anointed one. We can assume two of those votes were cast by Martin and his handpicked heir apparent, Jack Chambers<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Among the Glanmire MEP\u2019s supporters were James O\u2019Connor in Cork East and P\u00e1draig O\u2019Sullivan in Cork North Central. Gavin\u2019s selection was criticised by Seamus McGrath, brother of European commissioner Michael McGrath and also Martin\u2019s constituency colleague in Cork South Central. The Taoiseach\u2019s home turf seemed to be crumbling beneath his feet in the rebel county.<\/p>\n

Chambers was a key strategist in Gavin\u2019s selection. He was also overloaded with work as Fianna F\u00e1il\u2019s election director while simultaneously preparing for this week\u2019s budget as one of the Cabinet\u2019s two money Ministers. If Martin was banking on him being his successor, that plan too has gone awry. One of the Minister for Public Expenditure\u2019s credentials for succession is his crucial Dublin base, but new kingmakers in the capital have emerged. MEP Barry Andrews supported Kelleher for the election nomination and, although O\u2019Callaghan belatedly announced he was voting for Gavin, his last-minute commitment reeked of reluctance.<\/p>\n

Wednesday night\u2019s parliamentary party meeting<\/a> may not have fired the starting gun on a challenge to the leadership, but it has set the transition in train. As Kelleher said on Monday morning, the future of the leadership is \u201ca discussion for another day\u201d.<\/p>\n

For non-partisan observers the whole fandango is an instruction in the cynicism of politics. Fianna F\u00e1ilers are incensed that their non-party candidate has self-immolated, burning to ashes whatever chance they had of regaining the presidency. The party is their biggest concern \u2013 not how this farce threatens public respect for the office of the president and potentially undermines the winner\u2019s mandate. <\/p>\n

This is Martin\u2019s second blunder since returning to the Taoiseach\u2019s office on January 23rd. The first was when he agreed a government-formation deal with Michael Lowry<\/a>, whom he previously declared unfit to be a TD after the Moriarty tribunal found the former minister had engaged in a \u201cprofoundly corrupt\u201d attempt to enrich one businessman and \u201csecured\u201d a lucrative State phone licence for another, who showered him with more than \u20ac1 million worth of payments and loan facilities. Of Martin\u2019s two errors of judgment, the Lowry one was the most damaging to democracy but it caused barely a ripple within Fianna F\u00e1il\u2019s ranks. <\/p>\n

Contrary to his insistence that he will lead the party into the next general election, Martin is unlikely to still be in that position by 2029. As someone not greatly motivated by money, retirement from public life with a wealth of company directorships will hold little attraction for him. He has talked in the past about wanting to write a book. Bizarrely, there may be another opportunity for him to continue in public life. <\/p>\n

Gavin\u2019s name remains on the ballot paper. He could win. All eventualities are plausible in this farcical election. Should he refuse it, Article 12.3.3 of the Constitution states that another election must be held within 60 days if a president-elect resigns before the inauguration. <\/p>\n

Miche\u00e1l Martin for president? Stranger things have happened.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If Miche\u00e1l Martin had picked himself to be the candidate he would have won. But Ireland\u2019s most popular…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":112847,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[15526,9316,9,10,18,13,14,4771,2215,6,19,17,26736,19487,69831,11,12,15,16,5765,5,59,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-112846","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-bertie-ahern","9":"tag-billy-kelleher","10":"tag-breaking-news","11":"tag-breakingnews","12":"tag-eire","13":"tag-featured-news","14":"tag-featurednews","15":"tag-fianna-fail","16":"tag-for-you","17":"tag-headlines","18":"tag-ie","19":"tag-ireland","20":"tag-jack-chambers","21":"tag-jim-gavin","22":"tag-justine-mccarthy","23":"tag-latest-news","24":"tag-latestnews","25":"tag-main-news","26":"tag-mainnews","27":"tag-micheal-martin","28":"tag-news","29":"tag-presidential-election","30":"tag-top-stories","31":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=112846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112846\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/112847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}