KEVIN MYRES AT LARGE: Kerry is managing to produce a general election which Punch magazine, circa 1850, would have delighted in. Martin Ferris in Kerry North is a latter-day Whiteboy, an embodiment of those dark forces that aroused such visceral fears in Victorian England. And Kerry South has produced Jackie Healy-Rae, the stage-Irish buffoon who is a mere shillelagh away from comic perfection.
What the two men have in common is that their appeal lies in the unseen and the unspoken of. Both represent silent yet successful conspiracies. Ferris is the visible expression of a large armed movement whose existence is never mentioned in any debate, and Jackie Healy-Rae personifies the world of the secret deal, the hand slapped on the stairway, the meeting for the purpose of a free and frank exchange of opinions, at which everything is decided well in advance.
The Kerry South independent is a sketch, a circus-show, with his postage stamp of hair coiled in a pomade of greasy rattans around his skull, his endless leering chuckle, his slightly simian gait which would have brought ecstatic cries from the Punch cartoonist, and of course, the famous headgear, last seen on an Irish scalp in The Quiet Man.
If they were to make a film of the Kerry South election, Jackie Healy-Rae could only be played by Victor McLaglen, whose Englishness was such an essential asset in playing stage-Irishmen. Irish actors would baulk at having to portray such a caricature of Irishness.
Such caricatures hurt most when they are uncomfortably close to the truth. For all the embarrassment Jackie Healy-Rae causes to the middle class of Kerry, he is what many Kerry people want. His speech, his clothes, his endless mien of cute hoordom: they are all perfectly beyond parody, yet they clearly charm something in the mountain man's soul.
It's not just a question of charm. Jackie Healy-Rae gets things done in a county where no one seems to speak of issues. Politics in Kerry is all about the delivery of services. Martin Ferris vigilantly delivers one kind of service and Jackie Healy-Rae, with a different kind of vigilance - he has been a councillor for nearly 30 years - delivers another.
The quality of the roads will tell you whether an area supports Jackie Healy-Rae; as for those around his homeplace of Kilgarvan, you could iron silk knickers on them. Happily, his son Daniel has profited enormously from their construction. Last year, with contracts worth $475,000, Daniel Healy-Rae was the highest-paid plant-hire contractor to Kerry County Council.
Merely a matter of the most competitive tender, insists the county council, and you can be very competitive indeed if the road you're building is outside your front door. Kerry looks upon such shenanigans with beaming approval. Sure isn't being paid to build a roadway to your own front door what politics is all about?