THE Fianna Fail leader, Mr Bertie Ahern, has set out new guidelines for the operation of coalition government in which he rules out "solo runs that seek to pre-empt the position for which the government is collectively responsible."
In what was described as a "philosophical" speech about the evolving nature of coalitions, he outlined the way that parties can reconcile their mandates in government negotiations after the election. The Progressive Democrats were informed of the broad contents of the speech when Mr Ahern met Ms Mary Harney last Sunday and confirmed last night that they had no difficulties with it.
Mr Ahern has suggested that larger parties should not attempt in government to dictate to smaller ones "and must not take them for granted in dismissive fashion and under my leadership will not do so.
"But nor is it conducive to stability for smaller parties or independents to make a habit of putting regular ultimatums to a larger party or to try and hold them to ransom," he continued.
"Coalition or minority government should not be a vehicle for imposing agendas that would be unacceptable to a large majority of voters, as opposed to pressing minority agendas that, if implemented, would make a positive contribution to national welfare."
The Fianna Fail leader, speaking in Letterkenny, then put down a marker for the negotiations to form a new government with the PDs.
After this election, he said, Fianna Fail would have a fresh mandate "from which we could not depart, to maintain those established and broadly popular policies that have been underpinned by social partnership, and successive governments and by a broad cross-party majority in the Dail."
He added: "Any government in which we agree to take part will uphold social partnership, will maintain and, where possible, improve broadly the existing level of public services, as we can afford it.
"It will maintain the integrity of our system of social protection, especially assistance for the disadvantaged and some of the most vulnerable in our society. It will maintain and develop the semi-State sector, starting out from the principles set out in the PESP in 1991 agreed by a previous FF/PD government," he said.
It was important that the voters be absolutely clear where Fianna Fail stood on these matters "so that there is no possible uncertainty or unnecessary fears or political scaremongering in any quarter about what a new Fianna Fail-led coalition would do, if it came into being as one of the more probable outcomes of the general election," he continued.
Experience had shown that between two parties, like Fianna Fail and the PDs, or Fianna Fail and Labour, there were likely to be broad areas of agreement, or at least compatibility and complementarity, which caused no particular problem.
Where two larger parties had joined together in partnership, most of the programmes were merged, as each party took on the compatible priorities of the other.
He criticised Fine Gael for dropping nearly all of its pre-election policies when the three-party Rainbow was formed in mid-term during the last Dail. Where a large party and a small party had joined together, it had been a question of bringing on board in a joint programme as many as possible of "the relatively non-controversial and obviously beneficial proposals of the smaller party.
For a government of two or more parties to work well together, there had to be a spirit of co-operation and partnership, a willingness to give and take, to listen and to work patiently for agreement, and not to conduct solo runs that sought to pre-empt the position for which the government was collectively responsible, Mr Ahern said.
