GAVAN REILLY: They wanted power, they got it… why not use it?

GAVAN REILLY

YOU might have missed the moment last night. The party that currently holds government decided it was up to other people to form a new administration, and that its own votes don’t count.

There’s this perception that some parties were the “winners” of the election and that others were the “losers”, as if the very outcome of the vote - before a government is even formed - has determined the winner.

The truth is that the ‘winners’ are those who end up in power afterwards. In our new constitutional landscape where it takes weeks (if not months) to anoint a new government, we have allowed ourselves to be consumed in the nonsense that certain parties are ‘winners’ or ‘losers’ before the final outcome is determined.

Who won the 2016 election? Was it Fine Gael, who ended up in power, with 12 senior ministries - more than they held beforehand? You wouldn’t have said that on the morning of March 1st 2016 when the votes had been counted and FG had gone from 76 seats (36.1%) to 49 seats (25.5%). Yet objectively Fine Gael ended up in power and it’s hard to deny that was an election “victory”, pyrrhic as it might have been. When the results were finalised you’d probably have said Fianna Fáil were the winners, going from 17% (20 seats) to 24% (44 seats). Maybe you’d have made a case for Sinn Féin, increasing their vote from 10% to 14% and going from 14 seats to 23.

The formation of government is not decided based on who gets the most first preference votes. If it did, Fianna Fáil would have been in power unbroken between 1932 and 2011, a period in which they were Ireland’s most popular party in twenty-four consecutive elections. If government were decided by who had gained the most, Fianna Fáil’s 8% increase last time should have propelled Micheál Martin into power, not Enda Kenny. The Green Party going from two seats to 12 would also make a strong case. If government were decided by which group had the highest success rate - how many of its candidates were elected, and how many lost out - then the Healy-Rae clan should have a rightful claim to power given its 100% success rate in contesting Dáil elections since 1997.

Ireland is not a direct democracy, it is a representative one. The path to power is not determined solely by how many people give your party a first-preference vote; it’s about getting a majority of TDs to approve your appointment.

Which brings me to the position of a few parties who, until ten days ago, were going hell-for-leather looking for public approval to enter power… but who now contort the result of the election to rule themselves out of it.

We are led to believe that Fine Gael, having won 35 seats in the next Dáil, have “no mandate” to enter government and that it is the sole mission of Sinn Féin to try and do so instead. Fianna Fáil, though less explicitly, also seems to think that Sinn Féin has ‘won’ the election and must therefore take the lead in forming a coalition - even though both parties won 37 seats and therefore hold equal ability to influence the makeup of government (Fianna Fáil also having another seat by virtue of the outgoing Ceann Comhairle, Seán Ó Fearghaíl - who, by the by, was widely respected and would be a fine choice to retain the job).

Among the smaller parties there is also similar muddled thinking. The Social Democrats have been only too delighted to plunge into talks about forming a government, interpreting its six Dáil seats as a public nod of approval to enter power. Yet Labour, which was elected with literally the identical number of TDs, feels it is unempowered to use its influence in government.

Why is that? Why do we insist on interpreting election results solely through the lens of the previous one and not the one that has just happened? Why is Fine Gael a loser with 35 seats, but the Green Party a winner with 12? Why is Fianna Fáil a loser with 37 seats? Why are the Social Democrats winners with six seats, and Labour losers with exactly the same number?

The long and the short of it is that every party goes before the people looking for approval to enter government and pursue their ideas. Fine Gael candidates asked for this permission, and 35 were granted it. Fianna Fáil asked for the right to determine who should be in power, and 37 were given it. So too were 37 Sinn Féin candidates. Labour’s candidates did exactly the same thing as the Social Democrats’ candidates: ask for enough Dáil seats to contribute in a coalition. Each was given the same authority to do so.

Let’s be blunt. The notion that Fine Gael’s 35 TDs have insufficient permission to form a government, but that the Greens’ 12 do, is total crap.

We have to get out of the mindset that the right or privilege to enter government is influenced by how big each party was in the previous Dáil - or, indeed, how big it might be in the next one. Sinn Fein does not have a higher moral authority to govern simply because it could have won more seats if it had fielded more candidates. It didn’t, and we cannot construct a government based on the outcome of a hypothetical fantasy election that didn’t actually happen.

We’ve just had an election. 2.2 million Irish voters showed up to cast their verdict on the candidates in front of them. On February 8th we did not elect the previous Dáil, nor the next one. We elected the one that gathers on Thursday: the one which is representative of the Irish people’s explicit wishes, the only one with a mandate to govern the country.

Nobody is morally compelled to govern alongside those with whom they have irreconcilable differences, but they do at least have a duty to find common ground around which a majority of TDs can agree. And everyone - everyone - in the Dáil has a duty to pursue the policies their voters elected them to pursue. If not, they shouldn’t have asked for election in the first place.

Read Gavan Reilly's full column only in the Meath Chronicle every Tuesday