Party discipline likely to pay electoral dividends

Frazzled party handlers will often liken their jobs to the presumably impossible task of “herding cats” as this exhausting election campaign comes to an end.

It can be difficult to keep a collection of disparate individuals functioning as a cohesive group at the best of times, but ahead of nerve-wracking poll counts maintaining discipline becomes an even greater challenge.

Labour had Phil Prendergast, whose jaw-dropping example of disloyalty, when she called for Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore to resign as Labour leader, was dismissed as a nervous European candidate hitting a “speed bump” by mortified colleagues.

Fianna Fáil had Mary Hanafin, defying the party leadership to contest the local elections despite having been told headquarters had changed its mind about her standing.

The national focus on political goings-on in the ward of Blackrock, Co Dublin proved that this was something more than a little local difficulty for party leader Michéal Martin.

Fine Gael had Deirdre Clune, using a leaflet featuring a voting preference instruction from Taoiseach Enda Kenny much to the chagrin of the two other candidates, Simon Harris and Sean Kelly, who make up the team of rivals on the party ticket in the South constituency (documented by our colleagues in The Irish Independent yesterday).

And there are many more examples.

In fact, one day before polling, Sinn Féin stands alone as an example of a party which has demonstrated rock-solid cohesion.

Other parties snigger that their “military discipline” is a hangover from the bad old days, but there is no doubt such quips contain a note of envy.

At the party’s final press conference of the campaign yesterday, party leader Gerry Adams was asked to outline how this discipline was maintained.

He suggested Sinn Féin had a less hierarchical structure than Fine Gael, Fianna Fail and Labour, with decisions made collectively and democratically.

“I know there are conviction politicians in the other parties but the main difference between us and the other parties, particularly between us and their leaderships, is that we are a party of conviction,” he said.

When one wag asked if you had to have a conviction to be a member, Mr Adams gave this astute response: “As Eamon de Valera and other will testify having a conviction is no barrier to a success in politics, especially of the Irish Republican kind.”

Sinn Féin representatives repeatedly tell us their party is simply different from others. That may be so. As someone who has attended ard fheisenna of different parties, I tend to find them all a bit cultish.

But Sinn Féin events do seem to lack the destructive back-biting that other parties have fallen victim to over the years.

In the North, the Fair Employment Tribunal found in 2012 that a Protestant man who failed to be appointed by a Sinn Féin minister (Conor Murphy) to the post of chairman of Northern Ireland Water was unlawfully discriminated against on the basis of his religion.

Will Sinn Féin eventually become populated by opportunists focused on their own personal prestige and possible enrichment?

Party loyalists insist not.

The test will come when the party gets into government in the Republic.