ANALYSIS:A snap election isn't as crazy as it sounds: a Fine Gael-led government would have to make painful cuts, giving Fianna Fáil some hope in future polls, writes STEPHEN COLLINS.
THE ELECTION results have dealt a severe blow to the authority of the Government but, if it can make it to the safety of the long Dáil summer break in a month’s time, Fianna Fáil and the Green Party will get a respite and Taoiseach, Brian Cowen, will have an opportunity to lick his wounds.
Fine Gael moved quickly once the trend of election results became clear on Saturday night to table a motion of no confidence in the Government in order to keep the pressure on the Coalition. That debate will begin in the Dáil tonight and will continue tomorrow evening.
The motion is designed to keep the pressure on Fianna Fáil backbenchers as well as the Greens but nobody around Leinster House really believes that cracks will begin to appear immediately and the odds are that the Coalition will stagger to the recess in early July.
The motion is also likely to ensure there is little or no criticism of the Taoiseach, even of a coded kind. As the scale of the election rebuff became apparent Ministers rallied around and even disgruntled backbenchers refrained from criticising Cowen. Fianna Fáil’s legendary discipline is likely to serve as a protective cloak for Cowen, for the present at least.
Getting to the summer in one piece, however, will be the easy part. Coming back in the autumn will test the survival skills of the Coalition to the limit and, at another level, will test the will of the respective parties to stay in government.
For a start a battered and exhausted Government will have to face the people again in a second Lisbon Treaty referendum campaign. Finding the enthusiasm and the money for the campaign and motivating the party organisations to go out on the doorsteps again after such a bruising experience on June 5th will not be easy.
More difficult still will be the task of devising a budget for 2010. Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan has made it clear that he does not want to impose any further serious increases in income tax and that he sees the way forward through further cuts in public spending and a widening of the tax base.
That involves a range of unpalatable options from cuts in social welfare to cuts in public service pay and from property tax to a tax on child benefit. Some or all of these options will have to be on the agenda and the question is whether the Coalition has the nerve for the job following the drubbing at the polls.
The Greens have emphasised the review of the Programme for Government and this could certainly provide them with the excuse to stage an orderly withdrawal from Coalition if that is what they want. They see the review taking place over a number of months and involving consideration of the reports from “An Bord Snip Nua” and the Commission on Taxation.
Finding a way of putting a Green stamp on the revised programme is an achievable objective. The real question is whether the party wants to sign up for what will undoubtedly be another round of deeply unpopular budget measures, no matter how green the tint.
The Greens will be acutely aware that withdrawing from government and precipitating an election could see the Dáil party being wiped out. There would be one important difference, though, from the local election carnage in any general election that followed a Green withdrawal from government. The party would not be campaigning to remain in office with Fianna Fáil but going before the public on the points of distinction it has with its Coalition partners. Whether that would wash with voters is another story.
It is not just the Greens who are assessing their options at this point. Fianna Fáil TDs have been pondering the conundrum of how they can reverse the downward spiral in support while they continue in office administering unpalatable medicine to a disgruntled public. The conclusion many of them have reached is that it cannot be done.
They have to face the fact that they are likely to suffer an even worse pounding than their councillors if they go to the country in a year or two, having delivered more doses of severe pain to the electorate. Some TDs are pondering whether it might not be better to undertake an orderly retreat by having an election on ground of their own choosing in the second half of this year, before they have to take responsibility for the next, and possibly electorally fatal, dose of budget medicine.
There is a belief that that the party might not do too badly if it went to the electorate to seek a mandate for its broad economic strategy before finalising the next budget.
That would force Fine Gael and Labour to engage in real debate on the economic issues and expose the differences between the two Opposition parties.
“We would certainly lose an election in the autumn fought on the economic issues but we might be able to hold most of our seats. We could then go into Opposition and see how Fine Gael and Labour deal with the mess,” said one Fianna Fáil TD.
The chairman of the Fianna Fáil national councillors’ forum, Arthur McDonald, articulated a similar view when he said the party should not have gone into Coalition with the Greens in the first place as it would have been better to go into opposition after the 2007 general election.
Both Fianna Fáil and the Greens will have to make a decision in the autumn on what kind of budget is required and whether they think they can get it through the Dáil. The worst of all possible worlds for the Coalition would be to announce the budget only for it to be defeated because of defections from its own ranks.
The Government is still in a reasonably comfortable position in the Dáil although its majority has been cut to six following the election of George Lee and Maureen O’Sullivan and the departure to the European Parliament of Pat “the Cope” Gallagher”.
Fianna Fáil now has 75 Dáil seats, the Greens 6, former PDs 2 and 2 Independents, Jackie Healy Rae and Michael Lowry. That brings the total to 85.
The combined total for the Opposition is now 79. Fine Gael have 52 seats, Labour 20, Sinn Féin 4 and 3 Independents, including former Fianna Fáil TD, Joe Behan, and former Government supporter Finian McGrath.
Fine Gael and Labour are still basking in the glow of an electoral breakthrough. Fine Gael, in particular, has had a spectacular election result and the party now has around 340 councillors, well over 100 more than Fianna Fáil.
Fine Gael leader Edna Kenny has brought the party a long way since he took over as leader in the dark days after the 2002 election. There is some annoyance in the party at the continued questioning of Kenny’s leadership by some in the media. One Fine Gael strategist quoted US president Lyndon Johnson who once remarked: “If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read: ‘President Can’t Swim’.”
The proof of the pudding is in the eating and Kenny has led Fine Gael to be the biggest party in a national election for the first time in its history.
The general election cannot come soon enough for him.