The weakness of the Opposition was the key to this year's general election result, writes Mark Brennock, Political Correspondent
'No cutbacks whatsoever are being planned, secretly or otherwise." This was the key political sentence of the general election campaign and the political year. It was the sentence that reassured voters that with Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats, the good times would continue to roll. We could have our new prosperity and lower taxes; we would get our revolutionised health service and 21st-century infrastructure. And all without cutbacks, secret or otherwise. We could have our cake and eat it.
As the cutbacks, secret and otherwise, were implemented steadily in the weeks and months after the general election, the Opposition cried foul. They claimed the Coalition had stolen the election through deceit. Road plans were shelved; rail links were torn up rather than laid down; drug costs and hospital bed charges rose; promised cuts in waiting-lists did not materialise; aid to the poor abroad was cut; school buildings and extensions promised by Government backbenchers the length and breadth of the State were abandoned.
But while Fine Gael and Labour cried deceit, it was not just that the Government parties had won the election: the Opposition had lost it. Indeed, as voters drifted away from the Opposition, it was the PDs and Michael McDowell who produced the cleverest political pitch of the campaign. Appealing to anti-Fianna Fáil voters who were unimpressed with the Opposition, he urged them to support his party. Only the PDs could avert the horrors of a Fianna Fáil majority government. He spoke of the dangers of one-party government. The name Ceausescu found its way into his rhetoric. He climbed up lamp-posts in Ranelagh for the cameras, putting up posters to warn of the barbarians at the gate. It worked a treat, doubling the number of seats of a party facing extinction from four to eight.
Fine Gael found itself adrift from its traditional support base and its traditional message. Labour put forward some coherent proposals for raising money to pay for specific services, but was caught between being a party of government and one of opposition. It came up with nothing radical enough to grab the voters who were vaguely seeking to cast an alternative vote, who drifted to the Green Party, Sinn Féin and some Independents.
And while the Government won power, the smaller parties and Independents were the biggest winners in the general election. The Greens made the breakthrough from being a two-person Dáil operation to having six articulate, high-quality TDs. Sinn Féin's sole deputy, Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin, was joined by four colleagues, thus alarming other parties, particularly Labour, with whom Sinn Féin is now contesting its traditional working-class base.
Several Independents - Finian McGrath, Seamus Healy, Mildred Fox, and Marian Harkin - won or retained seats that Labour would like to see as its own. In urban areas the Green Party ate into Fine Gael support and took seats. Independent former Fianna Fáilers - Jackie Healy-Rae, James Breen and Paddy McHugh - won or held on to seats previously seen as Fianna Fáil territory.
The absence of a credible alternative government made the Coalition's job very easy. Fine Gael had dumped a leader and former taoiseach in John Bruton because of poor opinion poll ratings, only to replace him with Michael Noonan, who attracted even less support.
The election was the most disastrous in Fine Gael's history, with 23 Dáil seats lost and a final return of just 31. The damage was not merely in the numbers lost, but in the calibre of the fallen. The defeat of senior figures, including Nora Owen, Alan Dukes, Alan Shatter, Frances Fitzgerald, Brian Hayes, Deirdre Clune, the late Jim Mitchell, Jim Higgins, Paul Bradford and Michael Creed, robbed the party of talent built up over a couple of generations.
Entering the campaign with much of its traditional support going elsewhere, Fine Gael put over a message far removed from its traditional position. This was the party that, in the 1970s and 1980s, had told us that public spending was out of control, and that we needed to tighten our belts and don a hairshirt. This year, however, it offered compensation both to taxi drivers whose licences had lost some of their exorbitant value due to deregulation of the market, and to Eircom shareholders who had lost money on the stock market. It promised more generous tax cuts than anyone else, as well as quality public services to beat all-comers.
Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil spent the early part of the campaign claiming that the other party's figures were not credible. But the truth, as we know now, was that neither party's figures were credible. The months since the election have shown that the traditional Fine Gael belt- tightening message would have been the honest one. But having abandoned it, the party has since struggled to gain credibility for its accusations that the Government has been reckless with the public finances.
Labour's electoral strategy of leaving open the option of coalition with either Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael robbed the latter of a chance to put itself forward as leader of an alternative government. As Fine Gael failed to gain relevance during the campaign, anti- government voters switched to smaller parties and Independents.
Labour says it had no alternative to this strategy, even if it had wanted one. "Am I to go on to the doorsteps saying 'vote for me, vote for taoiseach Noonan'?" said one Labour candidate in response to criticisms of the strategy during the campaign.
He and others argued that a pact with Fine Gael would have lost the party seats. But the decision to run as an independent party left Labour between two stools. It was presenting itself both as a party of opposition that was nonetheless open to going into coalition with the main government party, and as a party of government with no clear commitment as to who it would govern with.
It campaigned on the basis that, under existing policy, promised public services could not be paid for. It proposed an increase in employers' PRSI to pay for childcare and the diversion of some of the annual contribution to the National Pension Reserve Fund to pay for infrastructure.
The party's daily press conferences on these and other matters were considered and coherent but failed to portray a radical image to the disgruntled elements of the electorate. Its return of 21 seats in the 29th Dáil - the same number it began the campaign with - was deeply disappointing to its supporters.
The success of the Greens, Independents and Sinn Féin has allowed them to form a "technical" grouping in the Dáil. This gives them rights to ask questions, to contribute to various debates and therefore to win a higher media profile. They have made significant electoral breakthroughs and will be hoping to build on them in the 2004 local government elections.
Fine Gael and Labour enter 2003 having replaced Michael Noonan and Ruairí Quinn with Enda Kenny and Pat Rabbitte. Both parties have major rebuilding tasks on their hands.
The Coalition is in the middle of the most difficult period it has suffered since first coming to power in 1997. Still fighting allegations of electoral deception on a grand scale, it would provide a large and unmissable target for a strong opposition.
But the most interesting battle is being fought out within the Opposition rather than against the Government. The Green Party, Sinn Féin, the Socialist Party's Joe Higgins and some of the Independents have used their new strength to make their presence felt in the Dáil and the media in a way they have not managed before. The traditional opposition parties are struggling to retain their position as the main alternative to Fianna Fáil/PD rule, and have a long way to go before they begin to convince people that they can provide an alternative government in the distant year of 2007.
This situation is giving great comfort to the Government as it faces into a long period of power - during which it could yet win back its lost credibility.