If Micheál Martin had picked himself to be the candidate he would have won. But Ireland’s most popular party leader has never wanted to be the President. His highest ambition always was to be the Taoiseach, and he is not ready to give it up. So he looked in the mirror and decided: what Fianna Fáil desperately needs is a mini-me. Thus Jim Gavin grinned down from the campaign lamp-posts. Balding and bright-eyed, there was something vaguely familiar about him though most people were asking: Jim who? Alas, when the candidate spoke, he had none of Martin’s conviction. There was only one way this was going to end. In tears.
That came to pass on Sunday night when the former Dubs manager dramatically stopped his election campaign after failing to come clean to both Fianna Fáil and the electorate about a 15-year-old debt of €3,300 he owed a former tenant of his unregistered rental apartment. (Gavin’s solicitors said there were “inaccuracies” in the former tenant, Niall Donald’s account, but have not disclosed what they are.)
Gavin departed the campaign trailing leggedy-last in that day’s Ireland Thinks/Sunday Independent opinion poll. For some in Fianna Fáil, the greatest pity is that Martin could be coasting to Áras an Uachtaráin now after his 35-year career in Leinster House. Superman’s creators could not have written a more splendid epic than our hero valiantly dragging his party back from the brink of annihilation before retiring to his happy-ever-after in the big house. Instead the knives are out.
Come January, Martin will have been Fianna Fáil’s leader for 15 years. By recent French attrition rates for prime ministers, that is an eternity. He owes his longevity to steely perseverance and the acknowledgment, even by his detractors, that he has been the party’s best asset. His reputation as “a decent man” helped rehabilitate it after the sleazy years of tribunal revelations and the Fianna Fáil tent. Yet, despite miraculously returning to the Dáil last year as the biggest party for the first time since 2011, Fianna Fáil’s usual malcontents have been waiting for him in the long grass.
Now they are joined by fresh recruits. By all accounts, the Taoiseach was emotionally contrite at the parliamentary party meeting on Wednesday night for choosing Gavin. Consequently, a semblance of peace has broken out in the ranks but it smacks of a temporary detente. On the day of the meeting, Jim O’Callaghan, the Minister for Justice who is regarded as Martin’s main rival for the leadership, confirmed he aspires to the role. His prospects have been enhanced by the Gavin fiasco.
Martin has managed to alienate two sizeable factions within the party. His dismissal of former taoiseach Bertie Ahern’s approaches to him seeking the election nomination and his opposition to Billy Kelleher’s pitch for the candidacy have brought a whole new canteen of knives to the table. Some of those wielding them were once Martin’s friends.
As Fianna Fáil’s health spokesman, Kelleher was a significant influence in changing the leader’s erstwhile anti-abortion position when he made a seminal Dáil speech advocating the repeal of the Eighth Amendment in 2018. Kelleher got 29 votes in the parliamentary party’s secret ballot to select its presidential candidate, just 12 fewer than Gavin, the leader’s anointed one. We can assume two of those votes were cast by Martin and his handpicked heir apparent, Jack Chambers.
Among the Glanmire MEP’s supporters were James O’Connor in Cork East and Pádraig O’Sullivan in Cork North Central. Gavin’s selection was criticised by Seamus McGrath, brother of European commissioner Michael McGrath and also Martin’s constituency colleague in Cork South Central. The Taoiseach’s home turf seemed to be crumbling beneath his feet in the rebel county.
Chambers was a key strategist in Gavin’s selection. He was also overloaded with work as Fianna Fáil’s election director while simultaneously preparing for this week’s budget as one of the Cabinet’s two money Ministers. If Martin was banking on him being his successor, that plan too has gone awry. One of the Minister for Public Expenditure’s credentials for succession is his crucial Dublin base, but new kingmakers in the capital have emerged. MEP Barry Andrews supported Kelleher for the election nomination and, although O’Callaghan belatedly announced he was voting for Gavin, his last-minute commitment reeked of reluctance.
Wednesday night’s parliamentary party meeting may not have fired the starting gun on a challenge to the leadership, but it has set the transition in train. As Kelleher said on Monday morning, the future of the leadership is “a discussion for another day”.
For non-partisan observers the whole fandango is an instruction in the cynicism of politics. Fianna Fáilers are incensed that their non-party candidate has self-immolated, burning to ashes whatever chance they had of regaining the presidency. The party is their biggest concern – not how this farce threatens public respect for the office of the president and potentially undermines the winner’s mandate.
This is Martin’s second blunder since returning to the Taoiseach’s office on January 23rd. The first was when he agreed a government-formation deal with Michael Lowry, whom he previously declared unfit to be a TD after the Moriarty tribunal found the former minister had engaged in a “profoundly corrupt” attempt to enrich one businessman and “secured” a lucrative State phone licence for another, who showered him with more than €1 million worth of payments and loan facilities. Of Martin’s two errors of judgment, the Lowry one was the most damaging to democracy but it caused barely a ripple within Fianna Fáil’s ranks.
Contrary to his insistence that he will lead the party into the next general election, Martin is unlikely to still be in that position by 2029. As someone not greatly motivated by money, retirement from public life with a wealth of company directorships will hold little attraction for him. He has talked in the past about wanting to write a book. Bizarrely, there may be another opportunity for him to continue in public life.
Gavin’s name remains on the ballot paper. He could win. All eventualities are plausible in this farcical election. Should he refuse it, article 12.3.3 of the Constitution states that another election must be held within 60 days if a president-elect resigns before the inauguration.
Micheál Martin for president? Stranger things have happened.
