Voters might not want crowning of ‘An Rí Micheál’

THE big parties insist voters don’t want a presidential election. But how do they know? While Fianna Fáil persists with its silly “Punch ‘n’ Judy Show” about a less likely early general election, it remains united on the prospect of rubber-stamping a return of President Michael D Higgins for another seven-year term.

President Higgins has been a star over the past seven years and there are many reasons why the Irish people would want him to have another term. But it does not mean the nation would not like to be asked who should be the next president. The 1937 Irish Constitution provides for a seven-year term for this country’s President.

Experts tell us the seven years came from France’s ‘Third Republic’, which ran from 1870 until the Nazi Germans arrived uninvited in 1940.

At its foundation French royalists only caved in on a republic partly when given the assurance that seven years for a president was equivalent to the average life-span of a king.

Thus Rí Micheál might be re-crowned.

But the question is, in a democracy, is it a good idea to consult voters? Do our voters want a Halloween coronation?

Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald thinks not, adding to the little-known Senator Gerard Craughwell’s determination that there should be a presidential election.

There are few grounds for assuming that Irish voters are ballot-box weary.

It is not like the economically troubled years 1981-1982 when we had three general elections in 18 months.

The last general election was in February 2016 – and six out of 10 voters showed at the polls.

Before that voters turned out in big numbers to vote in the same-sex marriage referendum in May 2015. We had a comparable turnout in May of this year in the abortion referendum.

We will have two referendums this autumn, on the position of women in the home and taking reference to blasphemy out of the Constitution.

We will have local council and European Parliament elections in May 2019.

If we vote a few times in between that, we will not be unduly over-burdened.