Michael D was not a radical president

…so little wonder the main parties want him to run again. But he, and indeed the country, deserve a battle

SO MICHAEL D Higgins is seeking a second term. Long on the margins of Irish politics, Higgins has relished being President and is wildly popular for an Irish politician. He has what we might call the common touch and is widely considered to have served our State well over six tumultuous years.

He might be 77 in April but Higgins remains spry and intellectually agile. He has certainly shown a nimble dexterity in getting out of his promise to only serve one term with his solemn declaration that he did at one stage say that getting through one term was ‘in fact the length of my aspirations’. But those aspirations have clearly changed, given that he has laid ‘very solid foundations’ in office so far.

For much of his political life, Higgins was a devout exponent of left-wing causes both internationally and domestically. Many were fashionable in certain avant-garde circles but had little wider resonance.

His two short spells in cabinet between January 1993 and June 1997 as minister for arts, culture, heritage and the Gaeltacht were the oases around long barren spells in the political wilderness. Even when Labour was in government, Higgins was against coalition.

The Bertie Ahern-Mary Harney boom years from 1997 with their emphases on tax cuts and individualism pained Higgins deeply. While he kept getting elected in Galway West, the tide was out for his type of socialism.

Then came the crash, the presidential election of 2011 and a political career that had all the signs of petering out to a footnote in Irish history was dramatically resurrected. Higgins’s victory had a type of ‘last man standing’ quality about it. As his opponents were undone one by one by various foibles, the avuncular Higgins was duly elected.

IN OFFICE, Higgins has remained true to his beliefs. His encomium on the death of the Cuban dictator Fidel Casto was consistent with his long-held views of anticolonialism and his opposition to US foreign policy. One other area where he has been entirely consistent has been on abortion and the Eighth Amendment. In the very week that the Supreme Court was deliberating on the exact nature of what is meant by the term unborn, a clip of a relatively youthful and passionate senator Michael D Higgins – engaging in an RTÉ debate on the 1983 abortion referendum with that priestly fraud Michael Clearly – popped up on Twitter.

As Cleary tried to define opponents of the amendment as being cruel and callous supporters of abortion on demand, the words of Higgins were eerily prescient. ‘The term “unborn” has not been defined and the failure to define it poses threats to the lives of women and poses threats to means of contraception,’ he told John Bowman.

As the country gears up for the prospect of a nasty and vitriolic campaign on the Eighth, Higgins will remain silent in the Áras, unable to contribute to the debate, such are the constraints of his office.

In July 2013, he convened his first meeting of his Council of State to consult on the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill 2013 but signed it into law without referring it to the Supreme Court. No one could be in any doubt as to where our President stands on the Eighth but his will be a voice unheard. This is because presidents have few constitutional powers of which to avail and so limited are these powers that presidents essentially have no room for independent action.

A president does have one significant power – the ability to refer Bills to the Supreme Court for a judgment on their compatibility with the Constitution. This a significant power in that if a Bill is referred to the Supreme Court and is found to be constitutional, then the validity of that Bill may never again be questioned by any court, no matter how it affects society and individuals over time.

That must surely have been in Higgin’s mind when he signed the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill.

Higgins has been an outspoken critic of austerity but he has not been critical of specific Government policies and has caused much less difficulty for the two governments that existed during his term of office than some of his predecessors did for theirs. Think of Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh’s decision to refer the Emergency Powers Bill to the Supreme Court and Mary Robinson’s handshake with Gerry Adams. These examples make President Higgins’s interventions seem very minor indeed.

MANY of Higgins’s critics have voiced concern that he has intervened on matters that are not his business, but the same was said about Mary McAleese. When the then-president commented on the Nice Treaty referendum during a state visit to Greece, a number of politicians said her intervention went what was allowed by her role, with John Gormley of the Greens advising her to ‘butt out’ of the political debate.

In fact, while Higgins has made various speeches as President questioning the whole neoliberal project and has long voiced concern at what he sees as the triumph of the market over social solidarity, he has not in reality crossed the line into public policy, which is the prerogative of the Government.

For instance, in December 2015, Higgins summoned the Council of State to discuss the then-government’s International Protection Bill, which introduced a single procedure for examining applications for international protection (or asylum), incorporating eligibility for refugee and subsidiary protection status. Critics believed the Bill would inevitably lead to deportation. The likelihood is that Higgins summoned the council to discuss the Bill out of a passion for social justice, a concern for the plight of refugees and the possibility that this Bill did not go far enough in the pursuit of either.

Ultimately, by deciding not to refer the Bill to the Supreme Court, he continued down a path he has trodden since his inauguration – that of raising his doubts in public about aspects of a government’s public policy but in effect being happy on consideration to stand by them.

In that context Higgins has not really been a radical president at all and it is no surprise that the main political parties want him to run again. Having opted out in 2011, Fianna Fáil has no real desire to run a candidate this time either. Fine Gael has a disastrous record in presidential elections, while Labour is on life support and desperate for Higgins to stay in office. All three – and the President himself – would prefer that there not to be a contest.

But a presidential election there should be. If he wants a second term to continue on those very solid foundations he claims to have built, then Michael D himself deserves an election and a heavyweight challenger.

With Mary Lou McDonald saying she is favour of a contest, all eyes will turn towards the ultimate narcissist in Irish politics, Gerry Adams, who will be 70 come the election. And if these two old socialists face off against each other, then surely conservative Ireland will have to have a standard bearer. And what about a president for a new generation?

We need a presidential election to be a battle of ideas for a new Ireland. That in itself would be a fitting legacy for President’s Higgins’s tenure.