It’s not just a lust for power that drives Bertie to full term in office

I AM about to collect a few euro from two colleagues who bet with me that Bertie Ahern would call an election this year.

Although there are still seven months to go in 2006, they have both decided to pay out following Bertie’s confirmation to Ryan Tubridy on Saturday night that the election will be in either May or June next year.

The only question remaining is when precisely in the summer of 2007 the election will be held. There has been much speculation that the election will be all over by this time next year. I’m not so sure. I think it’s at least as likely that it will be mid-June 2007 rather than mid-May.

Indeed, according to our current electoral law, the election does not have to be held until early July. The 1992 Electoral Act provides that each Dáil cannot last for longer than five years.

What is often not appreciated, though, is that the Dáil term runs from the date that the House first meets after an election and not from the last general election polling day. The current Dáil first met on June 6, 2002, so Ahern does not actually have to dissolve it, and thereby call the election, until June 5 next year.

The Electoral Act also provides that the polling day must be not less than 17 days and not more than 25 days (excluding Sundays and bank holidays) after the Dáil is dissolved. So, in fact, the latest possible date on which the next election could actually happen is July 5.

A theory has begun to gain credence that the Taoiseach will dissolve the Dáil in late April 2007, just after the Easter recess. Those who advance this theory accept as gospel the notion that the Government always does better in polls when the Dáil is in recess and therefore it makes sense to call the election then.

However, it has not always been the case that the Government does better in polls when the Dáil is not sitting. The hammering which Fianna Fáil took in terms of public opinion following the success of Eddie Hobbs’ Rip Off Republic series last August is the most recent example of a recess where the opposite has been the case. In any event it would be ridiculous to assume that the Dáil’s Easter recess in 2007 will be a period of political lull.

Coming as it will when pre-election fever is likely to be at a great height, it will be far from a politically quiet time. Despite Ahern’s repeated insistence between 1997 and 2002 that he intended to go a full term, many disbelieved him. In the end of course, he went to the polls one month short of the full term. The election was called on April 24 and polling was on Friday, May 17.

However, that date was a little earlier than the Taoiseach would have preferred. Back in those days Ireland used to qualify for the World Cup. Soccer fever would have meant there was no real prospect that the election could be in held June, so he went for a May poll.

He was wise. Who knows what the implications would have been if the election campaign had been dominated by the Roy Keane/Mick McCarthy face-off or if the nation had gone to the polls still suffering from post-Saipan traumatic stress disorder.

Ahern’s preference for going full term with his governments is not just down to a desire to retain the levers of powers until the last possible moment.

While he has more reason to fear that he could be displaced from the Taoiseach’s office in the next election than he had in 2002, it is not a fear of defeat that is prompting him to push the polling date back as late as possible.

In interviews immediately after he was elected leader of Fianna Fáil in 1995, he was asked what his priorities were. Apart from a list of national political objectives like the peace process, social partnership and the economy, he repeatedly identified two party political objectives. He was determined to reunite Fianna Fáil after the internal divisions of the previous decades and he was determined to show Fianna Fáil could make coalition work.

His success with these two aims is worth considering in the context of the party’s 80th anniversary celebration this week.

AHERN first became a Fianna Fáil TD in 1977. It was in this period that manoeuvres and machinations among his parliamentary party colleagues against Jack Lynch started and ultimately contributed to Lynch’s decision to resign in 1979.

THE ensuing Haughey-Colley leadership contest was very divisive. The party almost destroyed itself in the early 1980s with repeated heaves and controversies surrounding the Haughey leadership. Ahern was in the thick of these desperate times for his party — ultimately as Haughey’s chief whip. The manner in which Haughey fell was also divisive, coming as it did after the Lenihan presidential election controversy and, as some saw it, at the insistence of the PDs.

In 1992, Albert Reynolds was elected leader with a massive majority of the parliamentary party over his two rivals on the day, Mary O’Rourke and Michael Woods. This margin, however, masked the virtual leadership contest which Reynolds had fought in previous weeks against Ahern himself.

Any prospects of a new unity emerging in the parliamentary party under Reynolds was shattered by bitterness engendered by the large-scale cabinet reshuffle by Reynolds when he became Taoiseach.

In late 1994, Reynolds fell following the controversy over Brendan Smyth and the High Court appointments. In the weeks that followed Ahern himself did a lot to ensure that his election as Fianna Fáil leader would be unanimous. Indeed he spent much time into the early hours of the morning before the crucial parliamentary party meeting prevailing upon colleagues closest to Máire Geoghegan-Quinn to persuade her to abandon her by then clearly futile challenge so that his election would be unanimous.

In the 11 years since, Ahern’s skill, caution and at times frustrating promotions and personnel management policy have enabled him to retain the almost unanimous support of his parliamentary party.

His second party political achievement is equally significant. Haughey had brought FF across the Rubicon in 1989 by entering coalition with the PDs. Reynolds was to make FF almost indispensable in the coalition-making marketplace by negotiating a deal for government with Labour in 1992. However, the coalitions of both Haughey and Reynolds with Dessie O’Malley were tense and acrimonious affairs, and both ultimately ended in political trauma.

Reynolds’ government with Dick Spring came to an end in even more dramatic and traumatic circumstances.

By comparison, despite some relatively minor inter-party hiccups between 1997-2002, both of Bertie Ahern’s coalitions with Mary Harney have been calm and durable affairs. There will inevitably be some tensions in the lead-up to the election as both parties try to re-emphasise their identities, but a break-up is extremely unlikely.

The need to show that Fianna Fáil could make coalition work for a full term has been a key factor in driving Ahern’s thinking not only about how government should be managed, but also about when elections should be called.