Presidential election - Candidates have to be relevant

Following the deadline for the nomination of presidential candidates at 12pm yesterday, we now know there will be seven candidates. The campaign can therefore begin in earnest.

The office is supposed to be above politics and has generally been so. Only three political parties have nominated candidates this time — Fine Gael, Labour and Sinn Féin. In almost three quarters of a century, since the inception of the presidency in 1938, Fianna Fáil has essentially nominated every president but one — Mary Robinson, who was nominated by Labour in 1990.

Candidates will hopefully concentrate their campaigns on ways the President can play the most effective part in helping to address current problems, within the constitutional parameters of the office that have already been set. In the process, they should stress why the presidency is still relevant.

Many people have already asked whether the presidency is relevant. By the end of the campaign, the man in the street will have to be convinced of the relevance, and one measure of this will be voter turnout. If those seven candidates, who obviously feel strongly about the importance of the office, do not convince voters of its relevance, the next debate will inevitably be about doing away with the office, because the great expenditure that it entails would not be seen as justified.

Every candidate who gets more than 12.5% of the vote will be entitled to reclaim up to €200,000 in expenses, under a bill passed by the Oireachtas last month. This legislation actually reduced the amount that candidates can spend on the campaign from €1.3 million to €750,000 and cut the amount that can be reclaimed from €260,000.

With so many candidates in the field, it is inevitable that there will an element of point-scoring. There have already been serious questions about the actions of different candidates, and the voters will have to determine whether those matters are really relevant.

There is also a danger that, in the struggle for viewers or readers, parts of the media may get carried away. The campaign should be about the candidates, not about the media. The history and background of each candidate is, of course, important. However, people should remember the old adage that the man or woman who never made a mistake probably never made anything.

People should be mature enough to recognise that all the candidates are human, and all humans are fallible. The behaviour of anyone who seeks to portray himself or herself as a perfect specimen of humanity should be recognised for what it is — an insult to the intelligence of the electorate. That is not to say that mistakes should be ignored, but they should be kept in perspective.