Has President Higgins gone too far?

Practical politics are multi-layered

IT was significant that President Michael D Higgins gave the interview to the Financial Times.

The FT is read widely in business and political circles globally and anything on the front page guarantees maximum exposure.

The resulting controversy is less about the content, than the correctness of the President entering deeply into the proper remit of the Government. If a minister had said the same thing it almost certainly would not have made the front page.

In fact it might not have made the front page of the Skibbereen Eagle. The fact that he did, however, tells a lot about how the President is using his office and as evidenced by the FT, how his stance is interpreted to influentially position Ireland.

So what is the problem? The problem is potentially enormous. The president in the context of overarching socio-economic views advocated eurozone bonds as a means of addressing the crisis. He went on to criticise European leaders for delivering on a separation of bank debt from sovereign debt. The practical politics of this are multi-layered.

Firstly, the alternative economic model he advocates never received a democratic mandate in this county.

Secondly, in relation to the specifics he raised, his stance is at variance with a considerable body of opinion in Germany at least and perhaps elsewhere. In the context of forthcoming German elections, it is, to put it mildly, impolitic of an Irish president to take it upon himself to risk intruding the Irish case into the mêlée of a German election.

That danger was fully evident in an inside piece in the newspaper where there was an extensive analysis of our “aggressive tax policies”. That Ireland’s president criticises a “hegemonic” economic model on the front page of the FT, that on page 7 is said to operate on steroids here, is to put it mildly inopportune. Far from helping the outcomes the President advocated, it risks hindering them.

More important than the impolitic nature of the remarks is their constitutional impropriety. The Constitution which Mr Higgins swore to uphold gives him limited but critically important powers.

These include referring legislation to the Supreme Court and refusing a taoiseach who has lost his majority dissolution of the Dáil. Article 13.9 of the Constitution states the president will act “only on the advice of the Government, save where it is provided by this Constitution that he shall act in his absolute discretion or after consultation with or in relation to the Council of State”.

A president is constitutionally required to have the Government’s permission to leave the State and this has on occasion been refused.

The provision is about ensuring that it is the Government that determines our foreign relations, something the President should have remembered before he spoke.

Like his sortie into the Savita Halappanavar debate last November, Mr Higgins intruded into and shaped debate on matters of ongoing controversy in ways that potentially preempt the Government’s political prerogative.

Part of the core argument Mr Higgins made during his campaign was for his understanding of the office, including its limitations.

His excellent speeches to Unesco and the European Parliament this year demonstrate that understanding as well as his own capacity to be thought provoking. However, he is also demonstrating a capacity to repeatedly stray into political controversy in ways that seriously risk damaging the hard-won impartiality and independence of the office of president.

*Gerard Howlin is a public affairs consultant

Weaponry of choice is words

NO says Dan Buckley

TWO roads diverged in a wood, and I,

I took the one less travelled by.”

As a poet, President Michael D Higgins will be familiar with those words from Robert Frost’s poem, The Road Not Taken.

As an active human rights campaigner and veteran politician, Mr Higgins did, in some respects, take an unexpected road when he accepted the Labour Party nomination for president.

After all, he has always been a highly politicised figure and conventional wisdom dictates that the Irish presidency is a ceremonial office only and that constitutional strictures on it are such as to neuter the office holder.

But the facts simply do not bear this out. While there are many constitutional restrictions on the President’s movements and visits abroad along with powers he may only exercise “on the advice of the Government”, there is nothing that actually prohibits the office holder from speaking out on matters of concern to the Irish people. In fact, it could be argued that ignoring those concerns would be a breach of office.

Article 12 (8) of Bunreacht na hÉireann outlines the oath of office to be taken. It requires the president- elect to declare publicly to “dedicate my abilities to the service and welfare of the people of Ireland”. That — as Star Trek fans might put it — is the Prime Directive. It is hard to imagine how any president could swear that declaration and thereafter ignore the harsh reality of years of austerity on the very people he has sworn to serve.

Mr Higgins clearly takes that injunction to serve seriously, just like his most recent forebears. Mary Robinson, who held the post from 1990 to 1997, was a transformative figure who revitalised and liberalised a previously conservative, low-profile office. She may not have always been as vocal as Mr Higgins but she got her message across in more symbolic ways, placing a candle in the kitchen window of Áras an Uachtaráin to honour the Diaspora.

She travelled to Somalia in 1992 and went to Rwanda after the genocide in 1994. Her meeting with Queen Elizabeth in London was equally symbolic and paved the way for the queen’s visit to Ireland two years ago.

She was not beyond courting controversy, either. Towards the end of her presidency she paid a visit to Pope John Paul II in the Vatican, causing clerical consternation by dressing in green, rather than black, and refusing to wear the traditional mantilla. It was a symbolically feisty assertion of gender equality.

Her successor, Mary McAleese, made her presence felt as well, stretching the bounds of the office in the service of all the people on the island of Ireland.

Working in the background alongside here husband, Martin, she got to know and befriend people on both sides of the political divide, gaining their trust and respect and accomplishing immeasurable work to bring about a lasting peace.

On leaving office, she was widely regarded as being one of our best presidents.

The difficulty for Mr Higgins was how to follow that. Let’s face it: He is no glamour puss so the notion he would be happy to trot along from one ceremony to another for the next seven years was always a non starter.

A month before he won overwhelmingly the 2011 presidential election, he told the Irish Independent he had no intention of being nothing more than a mouthpiece for the Government. He has stuck to that.

Criticism of his intervention in the Savita Halappanavar case was tempered by the response by Social Protection Minister Joan Burton, who said his remarks on the case were “considerate, thoughtful, reflective, and humane”.

In other words, the sign of a good president.

In Nov 2011, we could have chosen a businessman, a charity boss, an eccentric senator, a Eurovision winner, an ex-IRA commander or a pro-life campaigner. Instead we chose a poet whose weapon of choice is words. Perhaps those who take issue with some of those words should show more respect for the Irish people.