Martina Devlin: Gallagher may have sealed own fate by uttering just one word -- 'envelope'
BERTIE may not be standing for the Aras, but another man steeped in the Fianna Fail ethos is in the frame -- at least that's the interpretation we can take from Sean Gallagher's behaviour, spotlighted during the last hurrah of the presidential campaign.
Until 'The Frontline' debate, Seanie had been swimming along, enjoying the exercise, without getting his face wet -- no big waves washing over him. But Martin McGuinness sent a tsunami crashing in his direction and all at once Gallagher was up the creek without a paddle.
If one word sums up the moment it all turned soggy for Gallagher, that word is "envelope" -- and he uttered the nuance-drenched word himself. His slip of the tongue may cost him the juiciest prize of his career.
This was no ordinary envelope: it contained a €5,000 political donation which first of all he said he collected for his Fianna Fail buddies at HQ, and then he said he didn't (his story keeps changing). Whoever accepted the contribution, it was made in conjunction with an opportunity to meet then Taoiseach Brian Cowen. No such thing as a free photo for your office wall.
One word tends to lead to another, and the other word which chimes in this context is "bagman".
Some are calling it trial by TV. Gallagher calls it an "ambush" -- lobbing in "hatchet job" for good measure. I call it the point at which the tide turned for the front-runner.
Gallagher's evasive performance during the debate smacked of Bertie Ahern at his most cagey and equivocal -- an unfortunate analogy. Particularly if a presidential applicant is presenting himself as an Independent rather than a thoroughgoing Fianna Failer. And even more so if the hopeful is positioning himself as someone to lead the people out of the morass of the past.
Just a minute, Seanie, you're up to your oxters in various aspects of that unedifying past.
Gallagher's story keeps being amended as he clarifies, re-clarifies, then remembers some more and does another spot of clarification about the incident surrounding a party fundraiser three years ago. His interview on the 'Six-One News' last night, far from setting the matter to rest, tended towards flip-flopping.
His real difficulty is that he has misrepresented himself in a number of ways. He is no Independent, he is a Fianna Fail candidate who lacks the honesty to run on his party's ticket. And he is no heavy-hitting entrepreneur, he is a small businessman.
When he claims to speak the language of business, it is hardly at a fluent level because he is not a businessman of any substance. He created 100 jobs at the height of the boom, of which four-fifths have evaporated. Some might contend that 100 jobs during this period of exceptional growth was a slight enough record.
And how did he create those jobs? His business came from developers -- a cohort which has left a sorry trail in its wake.
As for Gallagher's behaviour in business, some of it does not bear scrutiny. The company loan lodged to the wrong account was bad enough. Worse still were his actions -- wholly legal but questionable from an ethical perspective -- in taking money out of the business at a critical juncture.
In 2008 he paid himself a large figure out of his troubled Smarthomes company. Directors' remuneration was €195,000 that year -- an increase of €55,000 on the previous year -- and directors' pension costs also rose slightly over the same period. There were only two directors, Sean Gallagher and Derek Roddy.
So the directors were taking more money out of the company as it faced a construction downturn, rather than less.
Gallagher claims he tried to restructure Smarthomes to keep it alive, but taking sizeable chunks of money out of a company weakened by the downturn is no way to do that. Arguably he should have initiated a drastic cut to his pay and pension entitlements.
Such behaviour makes a mockery of his entrepreneurial claims. If voters wanted someone in the Aras with gold-plated business credentials, Michael O'Leary would fit that bill.
Was he annihilated by that damaging debate? He ought to have been. At the very least, there must be a serious dent in his support.
But what we see in Gallagher is an example of 'The Society of the Spectacle' as outlined by Guy Debord in France more than 40 years ago. In Debord's analysis, reality is replaced by its representation -- how someone appears in the media counts more than who they truly are. (Reagan and Schwarzenegger are examples of this.)
Voters watch Gallagher on TV as he expresses himself in clear, easy-to-digest terms, and he comes across as someone with whom people can identify. El Bert managed the same trick until he was finally rumbled.
McGuinness is the first person to put Gallagher under real pressure during the campaign -- an assault that makes sense when we reflect how he and Gallagher are going head to head for votes along the Border.
While Michael D Higgins will be the ultimate beneficiary of that timely piece of bushwhacking, there should be fringe benefits for McGuinness. It seems likely that some preferences will swap from Gallagher to him. One or two extra percentage points in the polls will make a difference to Sinn Fein, which is in this race for long-term gains.
Any vote above 10pc of the poll -- the figure achieved in the general election earlier this year -- is a result.
Whatever election day brings, any bagman links are not a presidential look for a Man Who Would Be President.
Irish Independent
