Mission Mary Lou now in mortal danger

MISSION Mary Lou, Sinn Féin’s campaign to move beyond its Provisional past, is in mortal danger.

At all three levels of elections the party’s poster girl, Mary Lou McDonald, was grossly undermined.

She lost her European seat.

Worse, it went to the Socialist Party’s Joe Higgins and not to Fianna Fáil’s Eoin Ryan.

Higgins is now the most high-profile leader of the anti-Lisbon movement.

In the Dublin Central by-election the swell of support for Independent Maureen O’Sullivan may have locked down the seat for years to come.

The runner-up place secured by Fine Gael’s Paschal Donohoe soured SF’s dreams of stealing the second Fianna Fáil seat.

And worst of all was the fact that party stalwart Christy Burke, after he won a Dublin City Council seat for SF, immediately defected to the independent ranks. This blew a hole in the facade of McDonald’s local organisation.

The combined forces have denied SF what it craved most for McDonald: an elected mandate.

When she was selected as the party’s vice president in January it confirmed a shift in emphasis to the anti-Fianna Fáil community approach south of the border.

But now she is vice president of the party without being elected to any of the many political fora in which SF operates.

It represents a SF strategy gone badly wrong. It made the early decision for her to contest the three-seat Dublin European constituency and delay another run at Dublin Central until a full four seats were on offer.

Immediately after the death of Gregory, McDonald made a dash to canvass in west Dublin, a swift signal Europe was her priority.

Long-time councillor Burke, a manifestation of the party’s community activism in Dublin City, ran in the by-election instead and got scant support from headquarters.

But with Burke defecting and likely to run as an independent McDonald has been severed from her support and everything the party represented in Dublin.

Donohoe, who had competed with Burke and McDonald in successive elections, said the party had shifted from popular to photogenic and compromised its credibility.

“Burke’s departure from Sinn Féin is a body blow to themnationally and, maybe, an end to their serious ambitions in Dublin Central. It is obvious to me that he was driven out of Sinn Féin bycareerists within the party and by some who are more concerned about the age and look of the face on TV as opposed to the experience that the face has,” he said.

Gerry Adams is not working south of the border. He was badly exposed on issues affecting the Republic at the 2007 General Election.

The Dáil leader, Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin, is kept in the background and his fellow deputies play an underling role.

But now McDonald is stranded, Burke will sap support in Dublin Central, a parachute to a commuter constituency will look cowardly and she will never have a better chance to secure a European seat again.

Save for an unlikely pitch for the presidency McDonald political future has a lot in common with Declan Ganley’s.