Michael McDowell: Gallagher could have gone from RTE to the Park
It can be difficult to be tough without appearing rude, says Michael McDowell
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WHEN it emerged in a recent Standards in Public Office (Sipo) report that Sinn Fein had spent thousands of euro on fuel supplied by Morgan Fuels as part of Martin McGuinness's unsuccessful presidential election bid, some commentators immediately noticed that it was the owner of this business who was at the heart of the famous 'Cheque-gate' saga that derailed the presidential campaign of Sean Gallagher.
We already knew that the same gentleman had provided Gerry Adams with an election office in the last general election. All of this served to revive memories of the famous TV debate in which Mr Gallagher imploded on air at the hands of Pat Kenny and Mr McGuinness.
It was, of course, a piece of riveting television. The 'bogus' tweet, the 'envelope', and an almost Billy Bunter-like explanation by Mr Gallagher ("I didn't eat the cream bun in your locker with the cherry on top and anyway it was sour"), and the subsequent, cringe-making radio confrontation with the lady in the audience who just happened to throw in the hard question -- all of these elements combined to destroy the frontrunner's chances in a very strange seven-horse presidential race.
Given that Mr Gallagher had ample advance warning of the issue and had at least prepared a line about Hugh Morgan's provision of an election office to Gerry Adams and his conviction for fuel smuggling, it still beggars belief that he didn't score a knock-out blow on Mr McGuinness in reply -- about the fundraising methods of IRA/Sinn Fein -- from kidnap ransoms in relation to Tiede Herrema, Ben Dunne, Don Tidey and Shergar, to bank robberies including the Northern Bank, to the failed $25m (€19m) sale of terrorist technology to Farc in Colombia, all the way to the murder of Jewish Belfast antique dealer Leonard Kaitcer in 1980, because his family couldn't raise a £1m ransom.
Pot?? Kettle?? Black??
Having dealt effectively with Mr Adams in live TV electoral debate myself, I know it can be difficult to judge how tough one can be without appearing aggressive or rude.
And maybe Mr Gallagher was inexperienced in the art of facing people down in public. But, whatever the reason, he emerged the loser from the Cheque-gate ambush.
If Mr Gallagher had handled it right he could have left Montrose on his way to the Park, and left Mr McGuinness on the floor. He could have turned the ambush to his advantage much as Newt Gingrich did to the host in the recent Georgia primary debate.
History could have been so, so different. Michael D would now be back in Galway improving his poetry style instead of delivering presidential philosophical reflections at the drop of a hat to unsuspecting audiences all around the country.
But it was not to be.
Last week we also learned that naive Americans have recently been bank-rolling Sinn Fein to the tune of $1.5m (€1.8m), blissfully unaware of the Cuban connection, the Farc connection, the Gaddafi connection, etc, etc. Mr Gallagher's collection of a cheque for €5,000 from a pal of Mr Adams on behalf of Fianna Fail, of which he was an active member, seems like chicken-feed.
Eoghan Harris page 29
Sinn Fein led the charge last week in condemning Jan O'Sullivan's ministerial allowance. Just how many millions in allowances did SF
members extract from the Palace of Westminster while refusing to take their seats?
If you believe for a minute, and I don't, that all their senior figures live on the average industrial wage and donate the rest of their salaries to their party, maybe Sipo should give us a ruling as to whether such arrangements breach the limits on individual donations.
All of this talk about money and politics raises another question -- the over-weaning power of the media as principals in our politics.
Was it wise or appropriate to participate in a seven-way debate in which the presidential candidates were pitted against each other, standing at flimsy podiums, frantically groping for sound-bite cliches, meekly raising their limp hands for permission to be heard, imitating the mouthings of goldfish, and looking for all the world like hapless contestants in a weird mutation of Ann Robinson's Weakest Link show? Or should that be The Biggest Loser?
Was this really the defining, deciding moment in a serious election? Alas, it was.
Our media are stridently demanding to determine the political agenda. They are increasingly trivialising, distorting and denigrating our political process and discourse. While posing as impartial ringmasters, the media are cracking the whip at hapless aspirants for, and holders of, public office who increasingly oblige as performing seals, tamed lions and pirouetting elephants -- all in the utterly vain hope of assuaging the hand that holds the media whip.
Things have reached a pretty pass when a national newspaper recently devoted two pages to a mauling of Lochlann Quinn for the mortal sin of refusing to answer the paper's questions about whether he is willing to forego a part of his fee as chairman of the ESB (a position that he did not seek). This is the same Lochlann Quinn who, with Martin Naughton, built up Glen Dimplex. They have both been immensely generous benefactors to public institutions. Just look around the UCD and TCD campuses. People like them don't need to be vilified simply because a Government has pleaded with them to lend their skill and experience to semi-state bodies by serving on their boards.
And, for that matter, it was also absurd and grotesque that Lochlann's son, Oisin Quinn, should be put into the political dock of Sipo for voting as a member of Dublin City Council on the issue of the maximum height of buildings simply because he had a fully declared small interest in a building owned by his family.
Just who do we want to go into public life anymore?
It is bad enough that we are beset by corrosive begrudgery. But when it is compounded by idiocy on a titanic scale, the outlook for our democracy is grim.
Hard though it may be, we need plain speaking from our politicians in defence of politics. We need to defend politics from an effort to oust our electoral democracy in favour of an unaccountable, unelected 'mediocracy'.
We badly need our politicians to stop engaging in collective, gestural acts of collective self-harm. There is difficult and unpopular work to be done. If it suits the media to belittle politicians, then those whom we elect should rebrand themselves as statesmen.
Originally published in
