ANALYSIS:There was barely disguised terror at what the recession will do to the country and party, writes STEPHEN COLLINS.
The Green Party convention in Wexford at the weekend demonstrated that the bulk of the party activists are still prepared to back the continuation of the coalition with Fianna Fáil but there was evidence of increasing nervousness about the long-term consequences for the party.
The official line was that the Greens are getting a lot done in Government and there was great emphasis on the green technology sector and its capacity to create jobs even in these terrible economic times.
Behind the optimistic exterior, however, there was barely disguised terror at what the deepening economic recession will do to the country and the party. As a party of Government, the Greens are stuck with the responsibility of being in power at the worst possible time.
Opinion polls show the Green vote holding up reasonably well, in spite of everything, but the polls also show that Green Party voters have no confidence in the Taoiseach or the Coalition and they want it to end as quickly as possible.
There is a lot of trepidation in the party at how the voters react to the next truly big round of tax increases and spending cuts that will be unveiled in the budget on April 2nd.
In his keynote address to the convention on Saturday night, party leader John Gormley pleaded with the Opposition to show greater understanding for the difficulties facing the Government.
“I appeal to the Opposition parties to stop the bickering and the grandstanding and the opportunism. You know an election is not going to solve our economic woes. You know the same tough decisions will have to be made regardless of who is in government.” While Gormley is right that the same tough decisions will have to be made by whoever is in government, the problem is the polls show that a majority of the public have now such little confidence in the Coalition that they would like to see an election to force a change.
“At this time I do not have confidence in an adversarial system which distorts the truth and simply confuses people,” said Gormley. While he may well be right on this point as well, the only alternative to the adversarial system is some form of national government and that is not on the agenda, yet.
It was interesting that while the delegates to the convention voted down a motion calling for immediate negotiations with the Opposition parties on the formation of a government of national unity, a slightly vaguer motion calling on the party leadership to consider the merits of a national government actually mustered a majority of 55 per cent to 45 per cent.
Because of party rules that require a two-thirds majority on major issues the motion was not actually passed but the simple majority in favour demonstrated the mood of nervousness in the party.
There was some surprise at the defeat of a motion from Dublin Mid-West TD Paul Gogarty calling for a conference in April of next year to review the performance of the Coalition and consider the option of pulling out of Government with Fianna Fáil.
The party hierarchy was happy enough with the motion as it did not commit the Greens to a specific decision on coalition but it was voted down by a combination of those who felt the motion might undermine the unity of the Government and those who want to get out of coalition with Fianna Fáil as quickly as possible and are not prepared to wait until April of 2010.
Gogarty’s message for Taoiseach Brian Cowen: “If in doubt we’ll pull out,” got a laugh but it prompted the delegates to play it safe and vote the motion down.
The Greens and everybody else for that matter, will be in a much better position to judge where their future lies after the emergency budget is published next month. Some of the decisions in that budget will undoubtedly pose a dilemma for the party.
The party managed to win an important victory in the emergency €2 billion package produced by the Government a month ago. A plan to make deep cuts in the overseas aid budget was vetoed by the Green Ministers and the bigger Coalition party accepted the need to compromise.
The cuts being sought in the forthcoming budget will be wide and deep and there will undoubtedly be strains between the two Coalition parties. On the performance of the Coalition to date there is no reason to believe that the strains will be too much but the nature of the cuts will still be difficult to accept.
Assuming the Greens get through the budget, the next big strain will be the European and local elections on June 5th. Those contests will be the real test of whether the party’s support really is holding up as the polls suggest.
A wipe out in the local elections and failure to recapture the glory days of the party in the European elections would provoke some real soul searching about continuing in Government.
After that there is the budget for 2010 at the end of the year when issues like a property tax, the taxation of child benefit and more serious of all, possible cuts in social welfare, will have to be confronted. Whatever happens for the rest of the year the road ahead for the Greens will be a rocky one.
