Martina Devlin: Electing Martin McGuinness as President would be a fitting acknowledgement of his crucial role in the peace process
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China has shut down its equivalent of the 'X Factor' because the state authorities take issue with the democratic concept of allowing the public to vote for favourite candidates.
Doesn't that have a familiar ring. Judging by some of the reaction to Martin McGuinness's name going on the Aras ballot, you get the distinct impression a number of individuals in the Irish Republic think this is an example of too much democracy as well.
During the Troubles, people in the 26 Counties often said: "Why can't they just get along in the North? Why can't they sit down together and thrash out their problems?" Enter McGuinness.
He was among those who coaxed people from radically different perspectives into doing exactly that. He helped to engineer peace. Not single-handedly -- there were many architects, but he held a pivotal leadership position and the role he played mattered.
To keep peace on track, he entered a groundbreaking, power-sharing government, forming constructive working relationships with first Ian Paisley and then Peter Robinson, once regarded as his political polar opposites. Nobody judged him an inappropriate Deputy First Minister in the Northern Executive. Yet as soon as his name was linked with the Irish presidency, he grew horns and cloven hooves overnight.
The double standards surrounding his entry into the race are breathtaking.
Up there has come down here and some of those who should know better are reacting with horror -- and hypocrisy. They are affronted he won't stay in his box in that place apart, this man who admits his IRA past -- although, granted, not with full disclosure -- and whose record shows his evolution as someone who worked hard for peace.
Some call McGuinness a terrorist. If he counts as one, then so do the agents of the British state, because terrorism is the use of violence and intimidation to produce political aims.
Those 30 years of the Troubles were a war, and warfare is not a cocktail party -- it is brutish. Indefensible acts take place during it. But I notice that many of those expressing opinions on the North and its citizens, and why they turned out as they did, hardly ever crossed the border. They are experts about a place they never inconvenienced themselves to get to know.
I grew up in the North during several decades of the Troubles, and I am content that the generation behind me has encountered only peace. But I haven't forgotten the discrimination, the two-tier society: I observed it all around me, I experienced it myself.
I wish the civil rights movement could have brought about reform, but it was not effective -- unfortunately, I don't believe advances would have happened without the IRA campaign. Bloodshed alone achieves nothing worthwhile, but it forced the main players to the negotiating table where progress was achieved.
Some say the price was too high, with so many dead and maimed. I say the North is a fair society now with a viable future.
McGuinness had a hand in this evolution. If those hands once held an AK-47, that is part and parcel of what made him effective as a peacemaker. It gave him influence where he needed to use it.
We must believe in people's capacity for change. For their own sake as well as for ours. I believe in Martin McGuinness's: his track record proves it.
However, I would urge him to be more open about his IRA involvement, on which he is elusive. I suspect a surprising number of people will understand, if not condone, his young man's choice of violence -- tempered by his subsequent renunciation of it.
Let's remember that the North was no normal place and ordinary rules did not apply. It was a society in which the aberrant became commonplace. Armed police, random checkpoints, armoured vehicles on suburban streets and a foreign army were common sights.
Our house was raided just before dawn for no apparent reason, as others were. Does that verb 'raided' convey the fright, the intimidation, the sense of injustice and bullyboy trespass?
It can't possibly communicate the muddy boots on carpets, the mattresses pulled from bed frames, the cupboards ransacked, the boy-soldiers staring at my mother and sister's bodies through their nightdresses -- the officer in charge wouldn't allow them to fetch dressing gowns, another step in the dehumanisation process.
The RUC could not be trusted if your background was nationalist or even just Catholic, and Sinn Fein and the IRA filled the vacuum.
Is McGuinness's past a barrier to the presidency? On the contrary, I regard it as a key element in an inspiring narrative. Here is someone who set down his gun and actively embraced democracy, showing his community how negotiation was a more effective tool than weapons.
He continues to prod his supporters forward, for instance when he urged them to give information to the police about Constable Ronan Kerr's murder. Nor does he confine himself to republican oratory: in 2009 he called those who murdered two soldiers and a police office "traitors to Ireland".
He has made mistakes, however. It was an error not to stand shoulder to shoulder with Peter Robinson at Islandbridge during Queen Elizabeth's visit: that would have been presidential behaviour.
Still, he has demonstrated a longstanding commitment to democracy and we should not take it lightly -- especially as democracy was suspended in the North for a considerable period (internment is only one example).
That aptitude for seeing the broader picture enabled him to make the transition from paramilitary to politician. I believe he has the capacity to make yet another transition, this time to president.
It doesn't hurt that he is a self-made man -- a useful example in recessionary times. Nor that he has volunteered to accept the average industrial wage of just under €36,000, leaving €214,000 plus in the Exchequer. Symbolism matters.
There is concern about the international message his election would communicate. It's up to us to explain that we regard him as someone who has done more to reconcile Orange and Green than any other candidate, should enough of us share this conviction and vote accordingly.
And in case you're still wondering, my mind is made up. My number one preference is going to Martin McGuinness on October 27.
