Enda close to slipping on 11th-hour banana skin in ballroom of romance
Thursday June 04 2009
The press conference was full of confused faces and the muted sound of dozens of bamboozled heads being scratched. Suddenly, a (long-life) lightbulb went on over Trevor Sargent's head and he leaned into the forest of microphones.
"The only way I can rationalise this, is that Enda Kenny had some experience in the ballrooms of romance in Mayo, when he asked a fella 'would you ask your sister would she go out with me?' It's the only logical explanation," he wisecracked.
Alas, for Fine Gael, the unfolding story is less akin to something from the imagination of William Trevor and seems more inspired by the comedic slapstick of Jacques Tati, with Enda playing the hapless Mr Hulot.
Until last weekend, Fine Gael was in cruise control, heading serenely for the finish-line of the elections. Apart from the flurry surrounding RTE's George Lee quitting journalism for politics, it had been a relatively undramatic election campaign.
Fianna Fail were too busy trying to escape from the national dog-house to cause trouble to the Opposition, and both Labour and Fine Gael were holding a steady-as-she-goes position in successive polls.
And then came the whoops-a-daisy banana-skin -- first in the unlikely shape of Fine Gael director of elections Frank Flannery, who appeared to suggest the party mightn't be all that averse to doing business with Sinn Fein; and then yesterday the Green's Trevor Sargent claimed that in the days after the 2007 general election, Enda had asked him to contact Sinn Fein as part of the machinations of putting together a rainbow government.
Well, honest to God. In terms of political bed-mates, this was like finding out that Julie Andrews was angling for Hannibal Lecter. All day yesterday, denials and counter-denials where thrown about like punches in a chip-shop at closing-time.
"Oh no I didn't!" roared an outraged Enda.
"Oh yes you did!" retorted a gleeful Green chorus.
It was the last chance for a bit of mud to be slung about before the broadcasting moratorium kicked in at midnight last night. All Fine Gael had to do was steer clear of the brown stuff for the last few days and they were safely through the tape. But with unerring timing, they turned a molehill of manure into a mountain of the stuff.
Fine Gael's last pre-election press conference outside their headquarters on Mount Street should've been a grand sunny affair. But instead Enda was forced into strenuous denials he had contemplated playing footsie with the Shinners.
"I did not seek support (from Sinn Fein) indirectly; and can you imagine anything so ludicrous as the leader of a party asking the leader of another party to contact the leader of another party?" he asked.
But when it comes to grasping the reins of power, even the most unsuitable of suitors have found common ground before. Enda was absolutely adamant he wasn't for wooing.
"I will not go into coalition with Sinn Fein," he declared.
"If I wanted to do business with Sinn Fein, I would've been Taoiseach for the last two years".
So, was Enda accusing the Green Party of telling porkies? "The Green Party are in desperation here, and they're floundering around grasping at straws," he asserted, sort of suggesting that fibbing was afoot, and that the Greens had drunk deeply from the mud-flinging Fianna Fail's Kool-Aid. All was confusion.
And the befuddlement deepened at the Green Party press conference later in the day, when Trevor and John Gormley tried to clear up the matter/add to the flap. "It's very hard to read what's going on inside the head of Enda Kenny," shrugged Trevor. "All I know is the phone call which resulted in him saying he wanted the support of, or would be prepared to accept the support of, Sinn Fein".
But was there a phone-call? Or was the hotly disputed contact simply a matter of Fine Gael's Phil Hogan having casual word in the ear of Gormley and suggesting he have a chat with Sinn Fein?
Gormley wasn't sure.
"We don't know what exactly they wanted," he explained.
"I'm sure if we had gone along and talked to Sinn Fein, we were supposed to come back and report back what he said." Oh lord. It was all very ballroom of romance indeed.
Wisely, the other parties steered well clear of the eleventh-hour dog-fight; Eamon Gilmore wouldn't comment, Gerry Adams wouldn't comment, and Brian Cowen contented himself with remarking he "couldn't figure out where Enda Kenny was going with it".
It's much ado about nothing on one level, and most certainly won't propel the electorate back into the arms of Fianna Fail in the polling-stations tomorrow. But it does give the unfortunate impression that if there was a single banana-skin lurking in the vast expanses of the Gobi desert, the foot that would land on it would indubitably be attached to a Blueshirt.
- Lise Hand
