Tne sunny day about three months ago I was walking along Marlborough Road in Donnybrook when I was passed by a large black Mercedes.
At the wheel was the woman known as Madam, otherwise Geraldine Kennedy, editor of the Irish Times and former Progressive Democrat TD. I saw her very clearly: as she drove, she was speaking animatedly into a mobile phone held in her right hand.
Marlborough Road is narrow and her Mercedes is very big and wide. And there is a school halfway up the road, and many others in the area, from which children come and go along the street. Some people would argue that talking on a mobile while driving was a foolish thing to do, possibly even dangerous. Others would disagree: they’ve done it a hundred times and never had an accident.
Either way, it was not illegal at the time. The editor was perfectly within her rights to use her mobile phone while driving three months ago.
She wouldn’t be now. Today, if you saw anyone – the editor of An Phoblacht, the Irish Times or Hot Press alike – taking or making what would no doubt be terrifically important calls, with a phone in hand while driving, you’d know that they were running the risk of being busted by the police and receiving the mandatory penalty points.
It’s a problem. We are often inclined to judge peoples’ past actions by present day standards and protocols. If Bertie Ahern accepted a gift from pals today, his reported behaviour of the early 1990s would be completely unacceptable. But the guidelines to which everyone refers weren’t in force then.
So, one cavils at the pursuit of the Taoiseach over a gift given before there were guidelines.
Well, that’s life. Or rather, that’s politics. Certainly, Ahern’s judgement failed him, and catastrophically so. True, he accepted a loan and a gift at a time of apparently great personal difficulty and that’s an extenuating circumstance of sorts. But in doing so he fashioned a stick with which he might be beaten – and that’s what has been happening over the past ten days or so.
His performance being interviewed by Brian Dobson on RTE during the week generated enough sympathy to get him through. That image of an ordinary bloke dealing with a personal crisis and being given a dig-out by his pals was persuasive. Pictures of him biting his lip and fighting back tears told of someone whose private life was being trawled by opportunists – or that was the emotional import at least. Here was a man brought low to Gethsemane.
At that stage, he was ahead on points. Few believe that Ahern has ever been involved in anything like the kind of personal aggrandisement being investigated by the tribunals. Furthermore, with a General Election due in the next year, he was potentially more useful to the opposition wounded but not gone – and certainly, in that bruised condition, he was the preferred election opponent, over a new leader with eight or nine months to build up a head of steam.
However, subsequent revelations about the st£8,000 given to him in Manchester have raised the bar. As I write, the Taoiseach has more or less gone to ground. A deal seems to have been done with the PDs and it is unlikely that anything new will emerge to scupper that and bring either Bertie or the Government down. But anything might happen yet. Conspirators are having their finest hour since, oh, when Albert Reynolds wanted to become President.
Of equal significance, the sight of Geraldine Kennedy and Colm Keena – a fine reporter and a decent individual – being summoned to appear before the Mahon Tribunal to explain their actions, and their refusal to reveal the source of the leak, has excited the fourth estate to fever pitch. To have done anything else would have been unthinkable. The intervention of the Tribunal has, however, added to the air of righteousness in the media generally.
Thing is, in truth most people are gagging to know precisely who did leak the information to the Times and why. There’s as much speculation about that as there is about who was at the famous Manchester dinner. Of particular note was the veiled suggestion in Mary O’Rourke’s comments in the Seanad that ‘we have to look nearer home on this one’…
The inference is that it was a member of Fianna Fáil who stabbed the leader in the back, giving the whole event a positively Shakespearean twist.
But who? One of the old country’n’western tendency that held power under Albert Reynolds? Or someone either passed over or downed by Bertie, who had fortuitous access to the leaked material?
Fascinating. Who could that be, who watched and waited for the optimum time to strike? And who else had a hand on the knife?
As I write the sky is full of squawking gulls and carrion eaters. The oracles are doing overtime. There’s a shroud-maker sewing hard, right through the weekend. People who had been very supportive are (furtively perhaps, but none the less determinedly) scanning the horizon – and the tea leaves into the bargain – to see what’s moving, to gauge if the dry stone wall is trembling, or the Praetorian Guard wavering.
Any moment now someone will sacrifice a goat…
Most likely Bertie will survive the shenanigans. He could prosper for years yet. Either way, we’ll know soon enough (and possibly by the time you read this). But one thing’s for sure, from this point on the cabals and plotters won’t rest.
Succession in Fianna Fáil, when it happens, may be quick and straight. But it mightn’t be. There’s many a slip… The conspirators will conspire. Courtiers and clowns will cluster round the likely. A quiet rattling will be heard across the land.
That will be the sound of elbows clearing a path to the top.
Watch out!