WINNING STREAK

A WEEK AGO IRISH LEFT LEANING POLITICIAN MICHAEL D HIGGINS WON RE-ELECTION TO A SECOND SEVEN-YEAR TERM BY A LANDSLIDE TO BECOME IRELAND’S NINTH PRESIDENT

Ireland’s ninth president Michael D Higgins, a left leaner, has defied the rightwards political trend which propelled Donald Trump into the White House and boosted right-wing parties across the globe. A week ago, “Michael D,” as he is known, not only won reelection to a second seven-year term but also secured the largest majority of any candidate since independent Ireland elected its first president in 1938.

The Gulf Today was on hand in Dublin, by coincidence, this time around and on polling day in 2011 when Michael D handily won his first term in office. During his first campaign there were election placards calling on voters to choose Michael D and other candidates on every lamp post. Ahead of this election I saw few. Everyone seemed to know who was running and what they represented.

Michael D, who won 56 per cent of the vote, stood as an independent against five rival candidates, four other independents, three men and a woman, and a women belonging to Sinn Fein, the party which has fought for the reunification of Ireland, divided by Britain (as is Britain’s practice) before Ireland gained independence.

Peter Casey, who came second with 23 per cent, and the other two men were television personalities who had appeared on the Irish version of the television series Dragons’ Den, a programme about business. They were collectively known as the “dragons.” In this election Michael D slew not one but three “dragons.” Forty-four per cent of voters cast ballots.

He won because of who he is. Michael D is an intellectual, a poet, a socialist, a campaigner for equal rights, and former president of the Labour Party. He was born into poverty in April

1941 in Limerick. His father, John Higgins was a lieutenant in the Irish Republican Army and took part in the Irish Independence War. Michael D attended University College in Galway, took a MA degree in sociology at Indiana University in the US and followed courses at Manchester University in Britain.

Although 77 years old, Michael D is the darling of Irish youth. He is an everyman who still queues at ATMS, a liberal icon of progress and clean politics and a man who has made his life’s work making life in Ireland better for its people. He has battled against conservative obstacles Ireland has faced over generations: the country’s religious, social and cultural dragons. After interviewing many young people, The Journal. ie wrote, “For many young people, Higgins is a man out of step with his own political generation — closer to millennials than many modern politicians.”

Bernie Sanders in the US and Jeremy Corbyn in Britain are comparable politicians although they do not seem to have Michael D’s intellectual bent and are not poets. But Ireland is a land of poets.

Michael D is also a man with a world view in line with his country’s world role. Since independence Ireland has tried and largely succeeded in staying out of Europe’s quarrels and wars although Irishmen and women have fought and died in both world wars. In recent decades the Irish army, a highly professional