When we vote, who’ll guard the guardians?

Now that the dust has settled, leaving reputations tattered, there’s a glaring question we should ask, writes Gene Kerrigan

THERE’LL probably be an election next year. Fine Gael and Fianna Fail are itching for a fight. No political difference — they’re like opposing football fans who just can’t stand each other.

They’ve recently been locked in an embrace, helping each other through a difficult time. Now they need an electoral scuffle to regain their allegedly separate identity.

So, next spring or autumn, or maybe in 2019, they’ll stage an election. And at 10pm on the appointed night the polling stations will close. On TV and radio, over-excited pundits will speculate about how the estimated turnout might affect the result.

Meanwhile, all over the country, the ballot boxes will be labelled, sealed and transported to count centres. And for 11 hours, until the count begins at 9am, the democratic will of the people will be contained in hundreds of ballot boxes. Under the care of gardai. Five years ago, it would have been outrageous to even ask the question — but now, with all that’s happened, it would be foolish to leave it unasked: do we trust gardai with the ballot boxes?

Until recently, I’d have dismissed such fears. Come on, I’d have said — this is the Garda Siochana, not the Chicago PD.

Even if a rogue cop wanted to stuff a ballot box, to elect someone or to sabotage a candidate they didn’t like, they dare not. Because there are countless honest cops who’d report them.

That’s what I would have thought, until recently.

Since the early 1980s, I’ve covered some questionable cases. In the process, I’ve come across gardai who were cynical chancers. And others who were admirable individuals whose commitment to duty and public service was beyond doubt.

In other words — pretty much like the rest of us.

Over the past few years, though, the Garda Siochana as an institution has been exposed as something beyond the imagination of the most paranoid of conspiracy theorists.

The training college at Templemore turns out to be a snake-pit of financial irregularity.

Almost two million imaginary breath tests.

Two bloody million. That’s manufacturing evidence on an industrial scale.

We knew that gardai here and there were doing favours, cancelling penalty points. But about 75,000 cancellations over a fouryear period? One individual garda cancelled 744 of them.

This was anarchy. The rules, the laws, and all the legislative and administrative machinery underlying them, were rendered redundant on the whim of a garda.

It was random and sloppy, with little attention to procedure. There were 48,000 records with missing details. Of penalties cancelled for speeding, no fewer than 40,384 records didn’t note the speed.

Just as well, perhaps — one person whose penalty was cancelled was traveling at 240kmh. Even Conor McGregor would gasp in admiration.

The GSOC report on all this notes that “members of such senior rank as inspector or superintendent” didn’t “abide by Garda policy”.

Maybe they didn’t know Garda policy, maybe they didn’t care. They knew they’d get away with it. And so they have. As the guys with the imaginary breath tests got away with it.

But, isn’t it a jump from this kind of thing to interfering with the vote?

Not for a politicised police force.

The politicians take a direct interest in senior Garda appointments.

Many informed people, of all kinds of political views, expressed surprise at the “false imprisonment” charges at Jobstown. The dawn raids and the way the police and the criminal justice apparatus were used in that case made a lot of people — even those opposed to the Irish Water protests — uneasy.

We’ve had Shatter/ Callinan and Fitzgerald/ O’Sullivan, minister and commissioner, standing shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, until the ground collapsed under first one and then the other.

We’ve seen the persistent hounding of Sgt Maurice McCabe.

Clare Daly TD was among the politicians who thoroughly examined McCabe’s case, found him credible and wholeheartedly fought to protect him. When she was stopped for making an illegal turn, she was arrested, had a urine sample taken, was released from custody and her personal details were put into the Pulse system.

No fewer than 36 gardai checked those details. An email about her arrest was sent to senior officers; the email was forwarded to 57 people; details of her arrest were given to 145 identifiable people connected to the force.

Two phone calls were made to the Daily Star from garda stations — Lord knows how many mobile calls were made. The tabloids gleefully smeared Daly as a drunken driver.

Much later, the urine analysis cleared her.

Daly, meanwhile, became the target of a detective garda who repeatedly abused her on Twitter.

Mick Wallace and Ming Flanagan spoke out on the whistleblower issue, both were the targets of Garda gossip.

In these matters, gardai abused their powers on both an institutional and a personal level. And got away with it. We know there are many gardai who uphold the law, abide by policy and treat people with decency. But there are others. And they know the culture of omerta will ensure they get away with it.

Should we take steps to ensure no ballot boxes are targeted?

Or should we shrug and hope we don’t suffer another scandal and have future elections supervised by UN observers?

The O’Sullivan/Fitzgerald fiasco, following the McCabe smears, leaves the reputation of the force in tatters.

At least three emails were withheld from the Charleton Tribunal. These were all crucial to alerting politicians that gardai were — on spurious grounds — challenging Sgt McCabe’s motivation. Questions linger over the Department of Justice.

The political parties are no better. Frances Fitzgerald, we were led to believe, was surprised to learn in 2016 about the new smearing of McCabe. We now know she got three emails about it a year earlier. And she remains lauded as someone who “did nothing wrong”.

For at least a year, knowing that the police had sought to discredit McCabe, the political parties backed the commissioner to the very bitter end.

FG and FF, claiming to be opponents, had private meetings where they agreed on what they’d say in public. This led to last Wednesday’s Morning Ireland, where FG was afraid to offer anyone for interview, so FF’s Dara Calleary robustly defended FG’s Minister for Justice, Charlie Flanagan.

It was a bizarre interview, with FF bound by private agreement to defend Flanagan, whose job they’d threatened days earlier. Never has the pretence that they’re separate parties been so threadbare.

As institutions, the police, the civil service and the political parties all come out of the McCabe scandal smelling of something thick, wet and bovine.

McCabe remains more admirable than ever.

The much-maligned mainstream media showed what careful, courageous journalism can achieve.

‘Come on, I’d have said — this is the Garda Siochana not the Chicago PD’ ‘We know there are many gardai who uphold the law and abide by policy. But there are others’