Come on, Mary, why the silence? I wonder what could be worrying you?

What is making Mary Harney keep her powder dry, and effectively leaving a cloud over whether a government will be formed on June 14? Is she looking for certainty there is nothing going on behind the scenes that would destabilise a government almost as soon as it is formed?

THE morning after the 1992 general election, and with Dick Spring’s permission, I got hold of Pat Rabbitte’s home number and rang him to suggest a meeting. I didn’t know him well then — in fact, he was a virtual stranger. But, depending on how you totted up the figures, his party, Democratic Left, could be seen as holding the balance of power. Labour had done immensely well in that election, and both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael had lost a lot of seats.

There was a slight problem, though. A recount was going on in Dublin South Central, and Eric Byrne of Democratic Left was locked in a tussle with Ben Briscoe of Fianna Fáil. If Byrne won, then a combination of Fine Gael, Labour and Democratic Left would just about have the numbers to make up a workable majority — and deliver the change Dick Spring had campaigned for. (It’s ironic that the same Eric Byrne, who is now with Labour, came within 70 votes of winning a seat this time. Had he won, the alliance for change would be in a stronger position today. So Byrne has twice come within an ace of making history.)

While we waited for the result of the recount, Pat Rabbitte and I rapidly agreed a process for entering into dialogue between our parties. Both of us knew the outcome in Dublin South Central was critical. If Byrne won, there was a real chance we could persuade, or even force, Fine Gael into a three-way alliance. I knew if Byrne lost, Fine Gael would instead try to force Labour into a three-way alliance with the Progressive Democrats.

Such an arrangement would be unacceptable. Labour was the only party in that election that had secured a convincing mandate, doubling its seats. We weren’t going to allow the party to be used to make up the numbers with two other parties that had lost seats.

In the event, Byrne lost, and our attempts to put together an alternative failed. Without the numbers, we couldn’t persuade Fine Gael to enter a minority government with DL, even though it would have had a huge amount of community and media support.

The antipathy within Fine Gael at the time to DL was visceral, and it was to be one of the great ironies that it was able to embrace DL with such gusto a couple of years later. The immediate beneficiary of our failure at that time was Fianna Fáil, which entered government a few weeks later with Dick Spring and Labour.

Labour was branded as a party that would say one thing and do another.

The result of this year’s election may not result in Labour being in government this time, but at least it should mean the party is free to run an independent campaign next time, without everyone assuming that independence means an automatic willingness to be Fianna Fáil’s coalition supporter.

However, the real point of this story is to remind people that the process of government formation, just like government itself, never stops. The minute the election results begin to become clear, even if they change later, contacts begin. While I was contacting Rabbitte in 1992, other people were in touch with Fine Gael (and although we didn’t know it at the time, contact was being made with Fianna Fáil, too).

The one thing we can be certain of this year is that people began working on putting the next government together on the night of the count.

So why, when the numbers seem reasonably clear, has a slightly eerie silence descended? Why, almost two weeks after the election, are we no wiser about what the next government will look like? I know there are little hints and nods, and the Green Party seems to be getting excited, but where is the real king-maker?

Why is Mary Harney so silent? A politician of immense character and experience, she has helped form a number of governments, both in her own right and at the side of Des O’Malley. She knows when a decision is straightforward and when it is complex. If she has decided to remain silent — and, as I write this, she has been effectively silent for more than a week — then the decision is not a straightforward one for her.

Why not? All she has to do is give the nod, and the government will be formed. She will have whichever senior department she wants, and a reasonable degree of freedom to operate in her chosen area. She will have a reasonable input into the drafting of the next programme for government, if she wants it. And once she’s on board, the independents will follow.

There is no reason to believe that a government won’t be formed on June 14, with a workable majority, if Mary Harney says yes to it. And there is no reason to believe it wouldn’t last, because the independents in particular will have no interest in crossing the floor of the House to bring it down.

So what’s the problem? All the signs suggest Harney doesn’t want to run for election again. She really shouldn’t see the future of the PDs as her problem, because she should feel that had she been left in charge, they probably wouldn’t be in the mess they are now. So what she wants and needs, surely, is some degree of certainty that if she decides to support the formation of a government now, she will be able to live with that for five years.

IF she is serious about completing her reform programme in health, it would take at least that long anyway. (And I’m speaking as one who doesn’t agree with many of her reforms.) Perhaps she’s tired, and feels the hunger has gone. She has certainly put in a long time, in a series of exhausting jobs. Combining the jobs of minister in a controversial department, party leader for most of that time, Tánaiste during all sorts of crises over the years, and TD for a constituency with more than its share of social and economic problems — you have to work in politics to know what a personal toll all that takes. Despite the supports available to people in high office, they frequently run out of steam.

But if it’s not tiredness, what is it? What is making Mary Harney keep her powder dry, and effectively leaving a cloud over whether a government will be formed on June 14? Could it be that she is looking for certainty that there is nothing going on behind the scenes that would destabilise a government almost as soon as it is formed? If she is certain the next government is likely to last, she would surely have signed up already. If she isn’t certain, shouldn’t the rest of us be told what she is afraid of?