Democratic def icit of a second term for Higgins

CHARLIE Flanagan was doing his ‘I’m in charge’ routine when the Taoiseach was on holiday and the other senior ministers were lying low last week. I imagined him as Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone, fiddling with the levers of power in Government Buildings and trying on old uniforms in the basement.

He fired off a succession of declarations, all of them carrying the authoritative imprimatur of the Justice Minister, reassuring us that the country was in safe hands.

He was ‘right on’ about the gender gap in pay, rebuked the gardaí for the delays on the penalty points fiasco and anything else that required a weighty opinion.

But his endorsement of a second term for President Higgins was curious. He wouldn’t have begun a debate on the presidency, even in the first week of the ‘silly season’, without knowing he was in tune with the Taoiseach’s thinking.

President Higgins has done this country some service since his election and consciously pitched himself above mere politicians who casually break promises.

And when his age, 70 at the time, was raised as an issue before the presidential election in 2011, candidate Higgins gave his word that he would only serve one term.

He will be 77 years old next year when the presidential election is scheduled. If he agrees to accept a second term, he will be 84 when it is completed in 2023.

But if he is returned as the head of state for a second term, without an election, he will be serving alongside a head of government who was chosen by a process that excluded the public.

And a President and Taoiseach, neither of whom has been endorsed by universal suffrage, is a definition of ‘democratic deficit’.

The Government would line up constitutional experts and professors quoting precedents to explain the double democratic deficit as a quirk of our unique structures of government.

But I can imagine Michael D Higgins’ and Leo Varadkar’s eloquence in condemning the same circumstances if they were not beneficiaries of such a convenient arrangement.

Charlie Flanagan’s pronouncement on the Presidency also drew a division among the independents at the Cabinet table: Shane Ross is all for a second term for Michael D but Finian McGrath believes there should be an election.

The Justice Minister sees the independents as a nuisance and the independents think he is in denial about new politics: but Flanagan’s colleagues in Fine Gael will cheer any division among the independents that can be exploited.

ENDA Kenny has made it clear that he will not be running for the presidency – which is another reason for Charlie Flanagan’s endorsement of Michael D’s second term. Fianna Fáil will agree to a second term for President Higgins to stop former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern’s candidacy – a prospect that could split the party.

And a no-holds-barred presidential election so soon before a general election, after which both parties may need the other to form a government, is in neither Fine Gael’s nor Fianna Fáil’s interest.

Presumably, President Higgins is flattered and will be unable to resist if all the political parties and Independents agree to his second term next year.

I can’t help harking back to candidate Michael D’s resolute promise to serve only one term in 2011.

But this resolve had softened by 2015, when he said: ‘In the fullness of time, when it’s appropriate, I’ll address that issue. Who are any of us to guess what circumstances will be like?’

That sounds like Michael D is listening to a call from destiny to fulfil his purpose.

And my guess is that the President will seize a second term with vigour and a renewed mission statement to serve.

The President is preparing for a state visit to Australia and New Zealand next month where he can expect the adulation he would miss as a pensioner in Galway. And whatever sacrifices are required, President Higgins will see it as his duty to serve a second term.

THE ‘right to be forgotten’ mission is a killer bee in Google’s bonnet but it has secured solid support in the underbelly of Irish public life.

And it’s not just politicians and wealthy business folk who would like the public to forget (and forgive) their old sins – after the evidence of them is destroyed.

Convicted paedophiles and other violent criminals, terrorists, tax dodgers and love rats have all made cases to have their past expunged.

The most regressive defamation laws in Europe prevent me from providing a list of those who I’ve been told want a fresh start. Or a clean sheet, so they will not make the mistakes that led to their infamy before. THE deluge of mockery and abuse unleashed on Danny HealyRae over his warning about road repairs and fairy forts in Kerry was puzzling.

Maybe the road in his constituency is dipping because of a sinkhole but I can understand his superstition – and so do most rural folk.

I looked back on the row over the Ferenka factory in Limerick – a symbol of a new and progressive Ireland when it was built in the 1970s. Workers’ reluctance to disturb fairy forts delayed the project while Dublin sophisticates mocked local traditions.

And it all ended in a miasma of bad luck: Ferenka’s boss Dr Tiede Herrema was kidnapped in 1975 and held captive for 36 days; the factory closed in 1977, just six years after it had opened.