BERTIE AHERN's nose was out of joint. Twice. "Somebody's trying to break it," the Fianna Fail leader quipped, smiling as he posed in front of the huge billboard poster of himself.
It was a profile shot and he looked pensive and thoughtful, just as a political leader should at what is effectively the start of the party's general election campaign. An FF insider thought the profile "De Gaulle like".
However, the French presidential effect was slightly marred. The posters - two off them hadn't been correctly lined up, leaving a disjointed nose on each side of the lorry parked at the top of Grafton Street.
"The party's director of elections, P.J. Mara, looking squirelike in tweeds, thought the poster showed his leader as a man of the people".
Presumably the glitches will be sorted out when the posters start appearing at 170 sites all over the State from today, at a cost of about £250,000. And between now and election day the man of the people will become the "rotating leader" because the poster will "revolve" from Bertie's profile, to Bertie looking two thirds forward, to looking directly out at his potential electorate by the time the as yet unknown election day arrives.
Of course, the new candidates and other party members will get their turn, too, with posters changing every two weeks in various constituencies.
The accompanying slogan and the theme of the campaign is "People before Politics". It was carefully chosen after research and consultations with small groups of the public.
And what the public has been saying to Fianna Fail, the party leader said, is that this Government is not putting people before politics. The current administration had done nothing for the people in the last three budgets.
"Don't forget that in the last 10 years the tax bands have gone from 65, 58 and 35 per cent to 48 and 27 per cent, and all but 1 per cent of that was by us. So people shouldn't think that things don't change."
Tax and crime will be the focus of the party's campaign, and the expectation is that 50 per cent of all adults will see the posters in the first two weeks.
The big question is when the big day will be. No later than May 15th, seems to be thee general consensus. Another date being considered is April 24th.
That would mess up Fianna Fail's ard fheis the previous weekend because, Bertie has established, under the broadcasting legislation RTE would not be allowed to screen the party leader's presidential address" so close to an election.
"I'm not so cynical as to think they'd do that," he said. "But then, they might."
