Fine Gael Maintain the ‘Drip-Drip’ Pressure on Bertie Ahern

This afternoon Fine Gael followed up last night’s debate and passport revelation that Bertie Ahern has helped Norman Turner apply for a passport while he was lobbying for the construction of a casino in Phoenix Park with allegations that Ahern was never really opposed to the Casino in the first place. On Vincent Browne last night, Simon Coveney was at pains to point out-and went toe to toe with VB on this-that Bertie said he was opposed to the casino at all times, in government and opposition. The Freedom of Information PDF is here-make up your own mind.

That makes more sense now as the FOI request to Finance is being played up as showing Ahern’s support for the casino concept in general, by virtue of the fact that it doesn’t prove he was against it. The sort of induction is open to all sorts of questions and I have read the material and I am not 100% certain it is anything like a smoking gun. What it does however is maintain pressure on Ahern throughout the next 24 hours of the news cycle and leave enough threads for further unravelling over the coming weeks.

The clear strategy by the opposition is to work on the, correct, assumption that politicians do not resign for one sin they resign for a sustained perception of bad practice. In other words a single headline is never enough to can a minister, nor is a week of bad press. They simply go under cover for a while and tough it out. It has always been the way. However when questions keep getting raised and the issue begins to stick-where nothing else is successfully associated in the public mind with the politician in question but a recent past of dodgy questions and dark shadows-then the pressure is there to resign.

Fine Gael are calculating that this practice of theirs, trying to maintain the Tribunal’s legitimacy as well as raising questions about Ahern’s evidence and story (the passport file was forwarded to Mahon and one thinks this will be too), is going to yield Bertie Ahern’s head on a plate. Its a tough calculation for if they go too  hard then they look as negative and dodgy as they want Bertie Ahern to look. Irish voters don’t like overtly negative politics, if anything we prefer a brand of cute hoorism that sees a fella ‘caught out’ and thus unstuck. So how tough Fine Gael get is not going to yield proportionally more support, though it has kept them up above 30% since the election and that is surely the task for the next year and a half.

Fianna Fail are becoming more and more agitated, expect Ministers to line up again tonight to defend the Taoiseach and condemn the opposition. What they are doing though in this act is following a shifting agenda away from the business of government. Neither Ahern nor his cabinet have been able to shunt the travails of Bertia Ahern at Mahon away from the front pages. They have been unable to produce policy, imaginative or otherwise, that has secured interest for longer than a news bulletin. This is a pity becuase the immigration bill and bills on data collection are both in the pipeline-there are posts on these anon.

They have been unable to move beyond the Bertie Ahern story since the election, they now appear to be occupying office solely for the defence of their leader and it is only a matter of time before younger ministers, aware that they may be the ones to pay long term for ten years in office, decide enough is enough. They are the ones for whom policy is vital in the next few years. Their careers after 2012 depend hugely on a successful time in their respective offices, having made changes to law, achieved policy victories and outclassed opposition spokespeople. Yet when these ministers are coming up against the same one or two from the opposition benches, so-called ‘tribunal spokespeople’ they are looking increasingly beleagured. They cannot dominate, set or predict the agenda and a vital advantage of incumbency is lost to them.

Where to from here is anyones guess but my feeling is that if Fine Gael walk that tightrope properly they may have some success. That feeling is more than matched by the dictum to be careful what you wish for however. We forgive and forget in this country and it is unlikely Cowen will be held accountable for the sins of his predecessory since neither Ahern nor Reynolds was. Thus they get a new slate with a new leader in plenty of time for an election and that may be the worst outcome for Fine Gael.