Fergus Finlay: The presidency belongs to the people - it needs an open contest

Our last three Presidents have brought international recognition and esteem to the office. An open contest will keep that going, writes Fergus Finlay

Michael D Higgins and his wife Sabina. I was one of three people who sought the nomination from Labour in the last presidential election. I came second to Michael D Higgins on the day and worked thereafter to help secure his eventual election. File picture: Paul Reardon

I probably need to begin this piece by getting something off my chest. 

Back in January I contacted the leader of my party Ivana Bacik and asked her to meet me to “talk about the presidency”. I wasn’t any more explicit than that. A few days later I got a warm and polite reply saying she’d be in touch soon about meeting up.

We’ve met once since, at a function to honour Brendan Howlin, and it was another warm and friendly encounter. But seven months of silence later, it’s slowly dawning on me (I can be a bit thick) that we are never going to meet to talk about the presidency. 

I’m long enough on the go to figure out that whatever calculation is going on about Labour’s role in a crucial upcoming election, the leadership sees me as surplus to requirements. I’ll be honest, I’m a bit sad about that. Not bitter, not angry, not vengeful. 

I know Ivana Bacik doesn’t have a discourteous bone in her body, and nobody understands better than I do the pressures on a party leader. But if we had met, I would have urged the entire leadership of the party, with every bit of feeling I could muster, that Labour must be involved in this contest.

And I would have asked for permission to enter whatever process was in mind to select a candidate. The last time there was a decision to be made, I was one of three people who sought the nomination in a democratic contest. I came second to Michael D Higgins on the day and worked thereafter to help secure his eventual election.

I fully understand that every political party has complex decisions to make about this presidential election, and my own more than most. Labour doesn’t have enough TDs and senators to secure a nomination and would have to work in concert with others. 

And of course a presidential election requires a lot of resources, especially when it’s crammed into a tight time frame. So, I don’t envy Ivana Bacik the decision that needs to be made, and I certainly don’t harbour ill will. 

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But one of Dick Spring’s most historic achievements sprang from his absolute determination to restore the presidency to the people. After all this time we’ve all probably forgotten how fusty and remote the office had become, and how much it had become the property of a single political party. 

On January 7, 1990,  Spring told a rather surprised nation in a radio interview that if no-one else would run for the Park he would do it himself, in order to make sure there was an election.

When he said that, we’d had a succession of older or elderly men over half a century, every one of them chosen through nomination processes effectively controlled by Fianna Fáil. 

Less than a year after he said that, Ireland elected a woman, Mary Robinson. She was 46 when she took office. The presidency has never been the same since. 

She turned it into something that really matters, and her successors in the office have cemented that importance.

Every presidential election cycle has three phases. There’s the early phase, where we are now. It’s a time when it’s easy to be cynical, to dismiss the effort that goes into it, to pander to populist instincts. 

An office which is the exclusive property of the people, which costs the same to run each year as it costs to build about 300 yards of motorway, and which can yield enormous benefits for the people, is frequently dismissed as meaningless and irrelevant. Every day on social media you can read the wise-acres announcing that it’s all a waste of money.

But that phase will hopefully change soon – at least it should - into one where there will be a real sense of contest and engagement. If our history teaches us anything, it teaches us that presidential elections have the capacity to excite passionate argument about who we are and where we’re going.

It’s already safe to predict that the closing phases of this election – if there is an election - will be tense and exciting, and that careers may well be made or damaged by the outcome. 

Because of the intensity of the scrutiny, a presidential election becomes a really searching test of character. I can think of a couple of individuals right now who would have a lot to fear from such a test.

And then there’s a third phase, when we abandon the early cynicism and the excitement of the battle, and look back at what our presidents have accomplished, what they have meant to us. 

To take just a couple of older examples. In a short time in office Erskine Childers showed how the presidency can have a warm heart. Paddy Hillery did our nation a signal service when he protected the Constitution on one fateful night.

Paddy Hillery did our nation a signal service when he protected the Constitution on one fateful night.

Our last three Presidents, all of them elected democratically by the entire people of Ireland, have brought international recognition and esteem to the office, while extending its boundaries in many subtle ways (some occasionally a bit less subtle!).

The important qualities we will end up looking for are character and judgement. Here’s why they matter. The presidency is a place of limited power, but unlimited influence. It’s vital that the President not be seen to be taking sides in political argument, but the people as a whole must always instinctively know whose side the President is on. 

By the nature of the office, Presidents often have to do things that are painful and uncomfortable – when a national tragedy happens, the people want to know that the President will be there, whatever it takes.

I’ve argued in the past for a “sleeves-rolled-up” sort of President, a President who can inspire and galvanise communities, who can use the influence of the Aras to gently move the occasional mountain. 

I’d love to see a President who can inspire communities to work together by working with them, and who can plant new seeds of hope throughout the country. When, for instance, communities are driven apart by fear over new arrivals, there’s no reason in the wide world why the President couldn’t invite all sides up to the Aras for a cup of tea.

I could be totally wrong – I often am, and I hope I am this time – but I’m detecting a strong sense of drift in the political system. All you read about is the cost of an election and the risk to individuals. I don’t think I’ve seen a line yet about the importance of an open democratic contest. 

If Ireland ends us with the major political parties, who between them control the nomination, coalescing around some agreed candidate, to save a few bob, that would be a terrible tragedy. The presidency belongs to the people. Whatever we do, let’s never give it back to the system.