The Cedar Lounge Revolution

An entertaining thread on Politics.ie about the ‘RTÉ (guys, do the fada, it’s dead easy) coverage of berties (sic) resignation announcement’ in which we are told that

this IS something thats bothering me. you’d swear the guy was just retiring gracefully because he wants to bow out.

thats not it at all and as we can see from the foreign coverage the rest of the world is calling it retiring in disgrace due to tax issues.

RTE needs to get their act together and report whats actually happened here

Now, I’m a sceptical king of a person and when people tell me something is so and so I tend to want to check that it actually is, rather than taking such things for granted (incidentally I saw the reports on RTÉ and they didn’t strike me as beyond the beyond, quite the opposite David McCullough and Charlie Bird took pains to say that the current little problems would influence future assessments of Aherns reputation). So, I did a little digging to see just how the foreign press and media (anglophone so far, my French is rusty and my Spanish very very minimal – I’d appreciate any precis of articles in those and other globalish languages) were reporting it as it broke.

And what do I find? Well, what I find is that no-one characterised it as ‘retiring in disgrace’. Indeed, what I found was an almost uniformly positive portrayal of a ’statesman’ stepping down due to the political attrition of Tribunals which came ever closer to his personal finances. Perhaps that delicacy is indicative of their need not to be sued. Or perhaps they’re trying to take a measured view.
Consider the New York Times:

Prime Minister Bertie Ahern of Ireland, one of Europe’s longest-serving leaders, who was closely involved in the negotiations that brought peace to Northern Ireland, announced Wednesday that he would resign next month.

He denied accusations of corruption in the 1990s, when he was finance minister, but said he was quitting to prevent his government’s work from being “constantly deflected by the minutiae of my life, my lifestyle and my finances.” He forecast that a tribunal investigating payments received by Irish politicians would find that he had not acted improperly.

During Mr. Ahern’s 11 years in office, Ireland’s economy has undergone a transformation to become one of the most robust in Europe, though more recently, economic growth has slowed.

His planned resignation raised questions about the future of his coalition government and about his ambitions. Supporters hint at his possibly becoming the first permanent president of the European Union, a new role being proposed for the 27-nation bloc.

“Ahern likes Europe,” said Sean Donnelly, a leading pollster who has worked for Mr. Ahern. “He is not just going to walk away from politics.”

Other analysts, however, said Mr. Ahern’s prospects would depend on the outcome of the tribunal investigating accusations that Irish politicians received payments from real estate developers in return for favorable planning decisions. It is called the Mahon Tribunal after Alan Mahon, a judge who leads it.

Or how about the Washington Post?

Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, who helped bring peace to Northern Ireland but was dogged by investigations into his personal finances, said Wednesday that he would resign next month after almost 11 years in office.

Ahern, 56, announced his resignation at a Dublin news conference as a government tribunal continues to investigate whether he received improper cash payments from businessmen in the mid-1990s.
“He has an affectionate following among the voters, who put him in office three times,” said Irish author and historian Tim Pat Coogan. Ahern remained popular, Coogan noted, despite growing pressure from opposition politicians and members of his own coalition government.

…

Under his watch, Ireland built hundreds of thousands of new homes and businesses and became awash with millionaires and even billionaires as the “Celtic Tiger” economy boomed. By 2006, the nation’s population had topped 4 million for the first time since the mid-19th century. Immigrants from Eastern Europe, Africa and China have been drawn to the flourishing economy, and many Irish who had left their once-impoverished land returned.

Working closely with Tony Blair, then Britain’s prime minister, Ahern brought Northern Ireland’s Catholic and Protestant leaders together to sign the landmark 1998 Good Friday peace agreement.

Former Irish prime minister Garret FitzGerald, from the opposition Fine Gael party, said in an interview that despite Ahern’s “financial problems,” the outgoing leader has “extraordinary negotiating skills” and has handled Northern Ireland and European issues “brilliantly.”

….
Ahern’s ultimate downfall follows an investigation by the Mahon Tribunal, which the Irish government established in November 1997 to look into allegations of bribes and other payments related to Ireland’s fast-paced development.

The tribunal has been investigating deposits into Ahern’s accounts totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars in the first half of the 1990s, when he was a member of Parliament but not prime minister.

Last October, Ahern acknowledged receiving cash payments from businessmen who were personal friends during the period when he was separating from his wife, Miriam. He denied that the payments were unethical.
….

Michael Gallagher, a professor of political science at Trinity College Dublin, said the resignation “was a surprise to everyone, but there was growing speculation his position was growing untenable.”

“Bertie lives in an ordinary suburban house and goes to the local pub, and he was never seen as someone who was making much money in politics,” Gallagher said. “He will be remembered well, as a modest and direct person who seemed to live the same lifestyle as most people. But nonetheless, there was something odd about his finances.”

The Guardian offered us:

Despite a reputation for immunity from scandal summed up in his “Teflon Taoiseach” nickname, Bertie Ahern’s otherwise successful decade as Ireland’s prime minister has been regularly undermined by allegations of financial impropriety.

In particular, Ahern, now 56, has faced persistent questions over claims that a Cork-based developer, Owen O’Callaghan, gave him money in return for planning approval when he served as finance minister in the early 1990s, a period when Ahern’s first marriage was breaking up.

…
In September last year, the prime minister gave a pugilistic performance in testifying to the Mahon tribunal, which investigates allegations of corrupt payments to politicians.

Ahern said he had never taken a bribe in his 30 years in politics, during which he became lord mayor of Dublin, then finance minister and finally prime minister in 1997.

“I have done no wrong and have wronged no one,” he said.

Reports in Irish newspapers about his finances were based on forged documents, Ahern claimed, saying there was a political conspiracy designed to bring down him and his ruling Fianna Fáil party.

Today, Ahern said that while he had made many mistakes in his political life, “one mistake I’ve never made is to enrich myself” through bribes.

“I look forwards to comprehensively dealing with these matters at the [Mahon] tribunal,” he said.

Away from the corruption claims, Ahern has enjoyed many triumphs, not least three election victories, in 1997, 2002 and last year.

During his period in office as Ireland’s second-longest serving prime minister, Ahern helped negotiate the Good Friday peace deal in Northern Ireland and led Ireland’s six-month turn holding the rotating EU presidency in 2003.

His tenure coincided with a somewhat golden period for the Irish economy, during which the once rural-dominated nation emerged as the so-called Celtic Tiger, a magnet for migrants from new EU nations and, in Dublin, home to one of the world’s most fevered recent property booms.

This prosperity has brought some legitimate personal benefits to Ahern. A 14.6% pay rise last year saw his salary boosted to almost £220,000, comfortably more than that earned by the US president, George Bush.

There’s more, but you get the point (notwithstanding the article on Comment is Free by Fintan O’Toole which takes a rather more jaundiced view…).

Now, lest this seem like an apologia for our beloved near to not leader, can I refer you to comments I posted here on Saturday which echoed the Irish Times in its call for him to resign, or indeed the broadly critical thrust of our posts on this topic over the past two years. So, it’s not an apologia, but it is an attempt to avoid the usual descent away from political analysis into partisan personality based stuff. I’m certainly not going to beat myself up because the Irish people elected him time and again, or that at the very least he has enormous questions to answer that will take a prodigious effort on his part to satisfy an increasingly sceptical Irish public. Indeed this ‘guilt by association’, or pointing abroad as if we are uniquely corrupt and corrupted irritates me no end. As was noted here by DJP O’Kane:

even if… [personal] corruption [exists] [it] was a symptom not a cause of structural defects in Irish society.This is the point that Dublin 4 and D’Olier street will not and cannot admit; their identity and politics is based on preserving that structure so that they can be its unchallenged masters.

And you cannot construct serious political strategies from self-flagellation, but I suspect that that might not be the lesson Fine Gael, and some of it’s more vociferous cheerleaders may take from this (indeed not just they). And here again I want to reiterate that Ahern is – even today – old news. The cameras at the entrance to Leinster House this lunchtime were assembled not to talk of him but the leadership contest in Fianna Fáil as evidenced by subsequent reports on TV3.

And it is this that will swamp Enda Kenny’s last best hope for long term personal political survival, the call for an election…

Repeating his call for a general election, Mr Kenny said: “I believe that this Government has not lived up to its commitments.

“I believe that, as we face a new challenge and a new time in Irish politics, that the new leader of Fianna Fáil should seek a mandate from the people of the country.

“I believe they have a right to say who they want to lead them, what parties they want to lead them and on what policies they want to [ be led]. And I believe that the new leader, whoever he or she is, should seek that mandate.

“All of the Ministers in the current Government and all of the Ministers in the junior partners have defended this Taoiseach on the basis of having done nothing wrong and of there being no lessening of the ability of Government to do its work. Clearly that has not been the case.”

Well, it’s a theory.

Still to finish, for an equally generous assesment as RTÉ, consider the following choice and selected quotes:

He has made the right decision for himself and the country to name an early date for his resignation as Taoiseach. And it is a measure of the political substance of the man that, through the manner of his leaving, he has partially redeemed his reputation rather than hanging on to be hunted out of office. He will have a well-deserved month-long lap of honour.

And…

Suffice to say that he was a very good Taoiseach for almost 11 of the most progressive years – socially, politically and economically – in the modern history of this State. Unlike others, he can genuinely claim that he did the State some service. He won the admiration of the people for historic achievements in office. What’s more, there was an affection for his affability, his ordinariness, his common touch.

But:

Mr Ahern had to resign as Taoiseach because all of the political mantras which he constructed for senior colleagues were shattering all around him. The day had arrived when it didn’t matter whether or not the Mahon tribunal could prove the allegation by Tom Gilmartin that property developer Owen O’Callaghan had paid £80,000 to Mr Ahern. The substantial sums of money which Mr Ahern received from other sources for other reasons over a continuous period in his political career had become the dominant issue. A finding from the Mahon tribunal could not, and would not, clear his name.

Do go on…

Some say that this is a sad day for Irish politics. It is personally for Mr Ahern. The decisive and dignified announcement of his departure, however, will have a restorative effect on political standards. For that alone, Mr Ahern must be given due respect and credit on this day.

The source of these kind words? Why none other than today’s editorial in the Irish Times. Magnanimous in victory… they partially redeem their own reputation.