Mahon Tribunal - Intimidation like this is unacceptable

DURING the election campaign any questions regarding the Taoiseach’s evidence to the Mahon Tribunal were shrugged off with what seemed an entirely reasonable “let events take their course, the tribunal is the place to discuss these matters, we’ll give the appropriate answers at the appropriate time ...”

“Let’s suspend judgment until the tribunal reports,” was the Teflon mantra that conveniently cut off any discussion about the labyrinth of complicated and implausible evidence offered by the Taoiseach during the campaign that led to him being elected Taoiseach for the third time.

Such was the cordon sanitaire surrounding the issue that Fine Gael and Labour did not pursue it with any real intent during the election because each time they did so their poll ratings fell.

It has been suggested, and it is hard to dismiss the argument, that had they done so it would have shown the moral courage needed to convince more people to vote for them than did.

An opportunity missed for the opposition.

On Thursday night — and again yesterday morning on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland — that Fianna Fáil mantra of patience had changed radically and dangerously.

Deferral was no longer the suggestion used to fob off the uncomfortable, but entirely valid, questions put to the Taoiseach.

The objective — calculated, cold and morally reprehensible — was to discredit and undermine the tribunal, to subvert its authority.

Another objective was to make the Taoiseach seem a victim, a martyr, a decent man bullied and forced into having his private life laid bare by an unreasonable and “biased” tribunal. “Biased” was the word used by Environment Minister Dick Roche in an attack the sole purpose of which was to subvert the functioning of a tribunal established by the Oireachtas.

Though slipped into a sentence as almost a throwaway remark it was sniping of the most vicious kind and when considered in conjunction with his repeated — and one must imagine rehearsed — “petty, personal, prurient” and “borders on voyeuristic” remarks it represents an attack on an office established to protect the interests of all citizens of the most unacceptable kind.

Mr Roche used his reassuring Grandpa Walton voice to hide the viper in the undergrowth and to disguise his shameless intent: The assassination of the tribunal’s credibility and purpose.

In warm tones he coldly and sinisterly overstepped the line of fair comment. It was, along with remarks from Foreign Affairs Minister Dermot Ahern on the previous evening, an intervention of the most unacceptable kind from members of Mr Ahern’s Cabinet. It bordered on intimidation of the shabbiest bully-boy kind and must be opposed.

“I don’t think that’s any of your damn business,” the Taoiseach replied to tribunal counsel Des O’Neill when questioned about his separation from his wife.

What a contrast that “damn business” snarl is to the infamous RTÉ pass-the-hankies interview when, bordering of tears, the Taoiseach first introduced his personal affairs into this arena.

Mr Ahern introduced his family life to this affair — no one else did — when he felt it might offer him a shield. To cry foul when those unhappy events are put under the spotlight is to validate the deepest cynicism and stretch the boundaries of hypocrisy to new lengths.

If the Taoiseach feels he is hard done by by the tribunal he, like every other citizen, has recourse to the protection of the courts — but that is all the protection he is entitled to.

Having cabinet ministers shouting from the sidelines like hysterical, half-drunk parents hectoring a referee at a schoolboys’ football match is reprehensible and utterly unacceptable in a democracy.

Fianna Fáil should take their own advice and wait for the tribunal to reach its conclusions and until such time as it does thinly-veiled intimidation like this must end.

The tribunal is to be protected and Fianna Fáil must understand that tactics from the Mugabe handbook of political intimidation will not be tolerated.