Even in this age of spin, Bertie is the author of his own bad image

LAST week Bertie Ahern was in the news over a representation made by his office on behalf of a quarry owner suffering from cancer. One of Bertie’s staff wrote a letter to a council official pleading that the quarry should not be shut down, because the owner is in ill health.

Writing to an official on the lower rungs of the bureaucratic ladder undermines the process of proper government. It is like making representations to a captain in the army instead of going through the proper chain of command and we saw what that led to in the Arms Crisis. Yet what happened this time was hardly a hanging offence.

Anyway, Bertie did not even see the letter. Somebody in his office used the Taoiseach's notepaper and signed Bertie's name.

Should we be worried about people having the authority to sign the Taoiseach's name? Remember Bertie's signature was the one that allowed Charlie Haughey to use money from the party leader's account to pay for Charvet shirts and dinners at Le Coq Hardi, not to mention some of his household bills.

Bertie could have made political capital out of the quarry affair if he came clean immediately, accepted responsibility for the letter and defended what happened on purely humanitarian grounds.

Perhaps not everyone would have accepted his explanation but most would probably have thought that his heart was in the right place. Irish people admire a politician who cuts through red tape to help others.

Our problem is that in recent years we have been inundated with stories about the sleazy behaviour of politicians just helping themselves and the last thing that any politician should do these days is to behave as if he has something to hide. Yet that is what Bertie did last week.

He tried to avoid being door-stepped by the media by bolting down the street to his car in front of a television camera. We have become accustomed to seeing accused people doing that outside courts. Indeed, I remember Charles Haughey doing something like that by racing into court after his son Conor distracted the media outside momentarily. But the camera crews did not get Charlie that time.

Bertie violated a cardinal rule. If you have nothing to hide, don't run away like you are trying to hide something.

Twenty years ago, The Boss, Joe Joyce and Peter Murtagh's book on Haughey, was a runaway bestseller. On the cover was a photograph of Charlie Haughey with a particularly furtive look as he was slipping something into his pocket. The look seemed to suggest that he had been caught doing something. The news clip of Bertie bolting down the street was always likely to have the same kind of subliminal impact on viewers. It seemed to suggest that the year was coming to an end with Bertie on the run.

It was not a good year for him politically. Most leaders get a bounce in the polls if a daughter gets married, especially if it is a kind of celebrity wedding between two high-profile people, but Bertie managed to shoot himself in both feet over his handling of his daughter's wedding. He antagonised the media and the public at the same time, not to mention our own tourist industry. In the process he did himself enormous political damage.

It was also the year in which his election promises came back to haunt him. It was not just that the hospital lists got longer and his Government failed to build any of the promised affordable houses. It was also mercilessly exposed as having deliberately misled the electorate when it said that there were no plans to cut expenditure (written instructions to make cuts had already been issued). And plans to upgrade specific schools were announced when there was no intention of doing so.

We elect a government to lead, not to mislead!

THANKS to the Freedom of Information Act, we were presented with firm evidence of the Government's deception. The Government reacted by trying to emasculate the Freedom of Information Act and while the amending legislation was being considered by the legislature, the ministers responsible Charlie McCreevy and his Minister of State Tom Parlon treated the Oireachtas with utter contempt by taking off for Cheltenham races.

Then to compound the insult, the politicians increased their own salaries by giving themselves benchmarking awards on the grounds of increased productivity.

Yeah, they have increased the waiting lists for houses and given us the highest inflation rate in the European Union!

Tom Parlon helped to undermine the Freedom of Information Act, but he was not shy about providing information when it came to claiming all the credit for the decentralisation to his constituency. Those who know about printing question how he had the stuff printed so quickly without disclosing budget secrets to the printer beforehand.

But then decentralisation really had nothing to do with the budget it was just another political smokescreen by the illusionists in the Government. They have employed more spin doctors than any government in history and they have been spinning so much that they are now distinctly dizzy.

Even Bertie's greatest achievement since coming to power his part in the Good Friday Agreement has been looking fragile now that Ian Paisley has climbed to the top of the political heap in Northern Ireland.

Paisley has come all the way from a joke in 1962 when he went to the Vatican to protest again ecumenism. Beforehand he went on BBC denouncing Pope John XXIII as the "Roman Antichrist", the Catholic Church as "the harlot of Babylon" and the following day he put up posters on Broadcasting House denouncing the BBC as "the Voice of Popery".

In 1967 he was ranting outside Stormont as Jack Lynch went to meet Terence O'Neill. With Paisley bellowing, 'We'll have no Pope here!" Jack Lynch turned to TK Whitaker and asked, "Just which one of us does he think is the Pope?"

Later Ian got himself filmed throwing snowballs at Lynch's car. It was a laugh then, but what are they going to do with that clown now?

It has not been a particularly good year on any front, religious, political, or sporting. While our politicians have been deceiving, our rugby and soccer teams both flattered only to deceive.

The media has hardly distinguished itself either. From the top of the pile just a couple of years ago we have managed to make rock bottom again. Now we are more distrusted than bishops, bankers, politicians and even lawyers. Is it the old case of blaming the messenger? Happy New Year!