QUIDNUNC/Renagh Holohan: In politics, a wily politician told Quidnunc, nothing is ever as good as it looks or as bad as it looks. Today, though, it is impossible to disguise or embellish the obvious. For all, it is a day of reckoning but for the leaders it is judgment day - and for none more so than Michael Noonan who, despite a good campaign, failed to improve Fine Gael's ratings. Under party rules, if he doesn't become Taoiseach he has to face a vote of his parliamentary party within 60 days.
If FG gets more than 50 seats, he may survive as a leader. If we are not forming a government said one diehard blueshirt, it's best that FF gets the overall majority: "That way they'll destroy themselves within a couple of years and we'll be rolling".
For others though, today's dramatic events will not have ended before thoughts turn to another election - the Seanad. Many outgoing Senators are hoping for election to the lower house and many outgoing deputies hope to retain their Dáil seats. But a great many of the unsuccessful will immediately start the gruelling campaign for the Seanad.
The ballot closes on July 16th and the count will take place over the following two days.
First, the Seanad hopefuls have to receive a nomination for one of the panels from a nominating body in the cultural, labour, agricultural, commercial, educational, industrial and administrative areas. Then they must crisscross the country seeking the votes of new deputies and county councillors. There are two other Seanad categories - the six university senators, all of whom are running again - and the taoiseach's 11 nominees, of whom Bertie Ahern had seven and Mary Harney four last time. The 11 all lose their positions once the new Seanad is elected, but with Ahern likely to return to power, some could be reappointed.
Some Senators are retiring, including the cathaoirleach, FF's Brian Mullooly; others will be entering the lower house, so there will be some turnover, despite the very restricted electorate.
While outgoing deputies all lost their status, and salaries, when the Dáil was dissolved on April 24th, the Ministers and Ministers of State continue in office until their predecessors are appointed. The country has to have a government so they hold power until the new government is announced by the incoming taoiseach when the 29th Dáil meets on June 6th and the new cabinet receive their seals of office from the President, Mrs McAleese.
Traffic-fine amnesty
Among all the election promises, one we didn't get was that the incoming taoiseach would wipe out outstanding summonses for traffic offences.
But things are different in France. The new transport minister, Gilles de Robien, has caused outrage by proposing that the 30-year tradition of an amnesty for parking and traffic offences after every presidential election be abandoned forthwith. "I'm for zero tolerance and zero amnesty for all tickets," he said while visiting the national highway information centre at Rosny-sous-Bois.
The pardon originally covered only parking fines, but was expanded in recent years to include crossing double lines and speeding. When another concerned politician tried to have the tradition abolished by the National Assembly, his move backfired. Since then, the League Against Highway Violence has campaigned against the practice, noting that 8,000 people a year are killed on French roads. Prof Claude Got, a specialist, says the amnesty encourages bad driving. Unfortunately for de Robien, he misread President Jacques Chirac's pre-election announcement that he would oppose "an amnesty for violations of the highway code that endanger the lives of others". Chirac meant the pardon would continue for other offences.
The new Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin has overruled de Robien and announced preparation of a draft law on a traffic amnesty, "according to instructions from the President of the Republic" for submission to the National Assembly after next month's parliamentary elections. To ease de Robien's feeling Raffarin added "the concern expressed by the transport minister for greater severity is shared by the entire government".
If Bertie Ahern had announced such a pardon to mark his re-election as Taoiseach, could he have become the first to benefit?
Urgent Israeli spin mission
The articulate and erudite Israeli ambassador to Ireland, Mark Sofer, has returned to Dublin after four weeks in Jerusalem and 279 interviews. Sofer was recalled at short notice to help the Israeli Ministry for Foreign Affairs to get their message across during the recent increase in retaliatory violence. Sofer, who is London-born, was seen as the ideal spokesman to counter the anti-Israel anti-American feeling in much of Europe. It was believed that strong New York or Israeli accents were alienating European listeners who were not only sympathetic to the Palestinian cause but respected a less-violent approach than US listeners did and were more interested in hearing about peace processes than retaliation.
Sofer was brought in to soften the message both in content, style and language and broadcast it on radio and television around the world.
Back in Dublin this week, he told Quidnunc: "There was a lot of disinformation and even lies being put out and it saddened me to see the immunity and even alacrity with which some European media outlets picked it up even through they knew it was not true."
Sofer returns to Tel Aviv in July and will be succeeded by Daniel Megiddo, who has been the Israeli ambassador to Singapore.
Judging upheaval
The country's solicitors, as represented by the Law Society, are in fine good form since the Act allowing them to become judges in all courts, from district to supreme, was signed by the President, Mrs McAleese last month. Their bonhomie, however, will be short-lived if a solicitor is not appointed to fill at least one of the three current High Court vacancies.
Law Society president Elma Lynch says the Courts and Court Officers Act finally gives solicitors parity of esteem on judicial appointments. With 80 per cent of lawyers being solicitors rather than barristers it is a right, she says, for which they fought long and hard. DG Ken Murphy said it was clearly in the public interest that the judiciary be drawn from the widest pool of suitably qualified legal talent.
Of the 35 judges appointed during the outgoing Government's five years, only 15 were solicitors and none of them went to the High or Supreme Courts. Five barristers and two solicitors were made circuit judges and 13 solicitors and one barrister became District judges.
Applications for the three vacancies on the High Court bench, two new appointments and one to replace the retiring Justice Dermot Kinlen, closed yesterday and doubtless many solicitors sent in their cv. The Judicial Appointments Advisory Board will recommend up to seven candidates for each vacancy and then the Government chooses. But will it be this Cabinet or the next?
Usually, when a Government is about to lose power there is a rush of appointments to boards, benches and such like, aka cronyism, but this time since little or no change is expected, it appears Bertie Ahern and his new cabinet have all the time in the world.
Call a voter
Telephone canvassing, a feature of US elections at least since the Jimmy Carter era, has come to Ireland. Quidnunc was telephoned at home by a canvasser for Fine Gael's Frances Fitzgerald on Wednesday evening. Queries later indicated that the Irish version of the system may have originated with FG's outgoing deputy in Sligo-Leitrim, John Perry, who has been using it for some time. Quidnunc learned that a list of names with telephone numbers for any given street can be obtained, at a price, from the Ordnance Survey.
Church learns election savvy
It took a Northern unionist, and a politician at that, to remind delegates to this week's Church of Ireland General Synod in Dublin that there was a general election on and it could be used to their advantage. Speaker after speaker bemoaned the crippling cost to small parishes of insurance for their listed/heritage buildings and the great restriction on worship imposed by regulations now governing church interiors. "Politicians and governments are very, very good indeed at announcing grandiose plans and making dead certain they don't have to provide the money to fulfil them," said Willie Ross, former MP for Londonderry East. He saw all the posters on his way to the Synod but who among the delegates had approached any candidate about heritage grievances? They should do so immediately "and then go back and remind them of the promises".
Then more politics. The churches, said the Bishop of Cashel and Ossory, Right Rev John Neill, should address the Nice Treaty and stop the message that Ireland wanted to keep EU advantages for itself. How could we not make sacrifices to allow eastern Europe to enjoy our freedom and prosperity? "Can we not make it a priority to help those fledgling democracies continue to develop rather than slip back into the hands of an old guard that is already gaining credibility? We have seen again," he warned, "the emergence of the extreme right in Europe very recently and the extreme left is not far behind."