The 10th presidency: Candidates should show their hand

ANY appraisal of how the office of President has fared under recent incumbents — and President Higgins too — must come to a positive, warming conclusion.

There has been the odd storm-in-a-monogrammed-teacup and even if Mary Robinson resigned prematurely from the highest office this Republic can confer, Ireland has been well served by at least the last three tenants of the Phoenix Park.

In an era when cynicism overshadows the relationship between the elected and the electors, this happy situation should not be scoffed at.

That good work continued in New Zealand yesterday, where President Higgins announced that Ireland will open an embassy in Wellington and that New Zealand will open one here. That was the sixth such announcement in recent weeks. Worthwhile bridge-building continues apace, and our President was again our interface with the world.

This time next year, if all goes according to schedule, we will be in the closing stages of a presidential election campaign. However, the main parties may agree on a single candidate.

Should that happen, we may be denied the high drama of the last campaign when the late Martin McGuinness, scuttled the hopes of Independent candidate Seán Gallagher by accusing him of having received funding from a “convicted criminal and fuel smuggler” during a live TV debate.

Even if you set aside the 24-carat hypocrisy of a Sinn Féin candidate attacking anyone over “fuel smuggling” it was a decisive, possibly the decisive intervention.

Up to that point, Mr Higgins, now the ninth president of Ireland, trailed Mr Gallagher in opinion polls by a significant margin.

Should there be an election, and it seems best that there should always be one, it would not be surprising if the polarisation around the Eighth Amendment threw up candidates from the fringes of that debate. Such candidates could hardly continue the good work of Robinson, McAleese and Higgins.

Mr Higgins has been at best coy about his intentions and has yet to decide, or at least announce, whether he will stand again. Were he to mark his 67th birthday in April instead of his 77th it is probable an announcement to stand would have been made.

Should Mr Higgins realise, through a vote or agreement, a second seven-year term, he would be 80 even before half of it had passed, and 84 before it runs its course.

Anyone who remembers the indignities suffered by a blind, infirm, Éamon de Valera during the closing stages of his presidency could not but be concerned. It may not be politically correct, but it is honest to suggest that Mr Higgins, for all his obvious qualities, is too old to run for a second term.

The alternatives are being coy too. Just yesterday, former taoiseach Bertie Ahern shrugged off questions about candidacy with a smirk: “God knows what will happen next year,” he said.

Even though next May will mark a decade since Mr Ahern held high office, the possibility of President Ahern would require a particularly virulent outbreak of the National Amnesia that served him so well for so very long.

At the moment, the office is held in high regard, and it would be a pity if that changed because of the self-serving machinations of those who would be our 10th president.