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Dublin Report Votes in North, Republic reveal an island in turmoil

February 16, 2011

By Staff Reporter

By John Kelly

There were two big stories of last week. Both revealed a confused island.

In one, the Republic of Ireland electorate peeped over the trenches of modern Europe and beat a hasty retreat. In the other, Northern Ireland’s unionists emerged almost evenly divided between the outright rejection of the Good Friday agreement of the Rev. Ian Paisley’s DUP and the grudging assent of the Ulster Unionist Party.

Conscious of the rump led by Jeffrey Donaldson within his party, the UUP’s David Trimble has rarely pushed the agreement with any real force since its inception. The simplest explanation, and the most likely, is that he is fully aware of the opposition ranged against him even within his own party. He is certainly even more aware of the anti-agreement feeling outside of it as the result of his own narrow victory.

The DUP made considerable gains. They may not always score the goals, but they keep hitting the bars.

Trimble emphasizes the need for IRA arms decommissioning as the key to his party’s continued support for the agreement and the assembly it spawned. Any serious observer will argue that it is not nearly as big an issue as Trimble maintains.

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Paisley’s party makes no big deal about it. The DUP is four square against the agreement. Its members don’t care about decommissioning; they simply don’t want to have to sit at the same table as nationalists.

This latest election shows that the vast majority of Ulster’s unionists support that view. That is the blunt truth Trimble continues to evade.

Sinn Fein, meanwhile, is deservedly pleased with the results of the polls in both parts of the island. It has delivered on its promise to color the electoral map green west of the River Bann.

In the Republic, it can also claim it shared in the victory of the "No" vote in the referendum on the Nice Treaty.

Whatever about the continued rejection of change in Northern Ireland, the referendum result in the Republic clearly indicates the people either do not understand the new Euro impetus or are disturbed by the direction it is taking.

Under the terms of the Constitution, Ireland was the only European nation obliged to test the voters on the enlargement of the European Union, acquiescence to the rule of the International Court and the abolition of the death penalty.

Low as the turnout was, indicating a remarkable insensitivity to the needs of the former Communist states of Eastern Europe, it was nevertheless a crushing defeat for the proponents of the wider union.

A majority of 76,017, in a total valid poll of 982,939, representing a 54 percent to 46 victory margin, is significant.

The other two matters the Irish people had to decide on was the abolition of the death penalty, still legally enforceable in this country under limited circumstances, and the recognition of the authority of the International Criminal Court, which maintains the right to prosecute war criminals.

Curiously enough, the abolition of the death penalty was endorsed by only 62 percent, a surprising result in view of the fact that it has not been enforced here since the early 1950s.

Perhaps it also indicates that the majority of voters were in the older age groups, a trend that continues here in election after election. Younger age groups shun the voting booths.

The Nice vote was an embarrassment for the three main parties, Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and Labor, all of whom supported it.

Only minority parties like Sinn Fein and, most notably, the Green Party, were against.

Yet the "No" vote campaign was much more professional. Posters screaming "You Will Lose" were pasted throughout the country, especially in Dublin, where the remarkable strength of the anti-working-class argument was significant.

The Celtic Tiger has clearly made no major incursions into a Dublin suburb like Tallaght.

The government ran a lackluster campaign. There was no presence on the doorsteps, no pressing of the flesh, no pro-European ovations by the taoiseach, Bertie Ahern.

Afterward, he mumbled rather meaningless platitudes about the degree of "concern" the Irish people share about the lack of "democratic accountability" within the European Union. These are issues that will have to be settled, he claimed, underlining his belief that the voters have no huge reservations about the enlargement of the union.

Grand as that may seem, the fact, nonetheless, is that eastern Europeans, particularly the Polish government, which is eager to join the union, will harbor grave reservations about the part played by Ireland in this early stage of the enlargement process. Ireland may have sacrificed a great deal of good will in the East.

The fact is also that other European countries, including five of the most powerful, are in horror of the prospect of having to hold such referendums in their own countries.

Nobody, least of all the Irish, really know why the vote went as it did. Even those who voted "No" for legitimate and understandable reasons seemed to believe that the "Yes" vote would win.

Quite probably, the simplest explanation for the unexpected result is that the poll was so low. Those who were in favor stayed at home convinced that the Nice Treaty would be ratified even in their absence.

Or could there be other, deeper factors?

Is Ireland, basking as it is in a rare prosperity, due largely to its EU membership, really afraid of losing the relatively minor power it exercises within the smaller present community? Is it really so sensitive about its neutrality as to even refuse to contemplate membership of a proposed rapid reaction force? Has increasingly chaotic immigration made it so nervous of foreigners as to be suspicious of all?

There are important questions to be answered in the wake of this surprising referendum result. They revolve around the perception Irish people have of themselves in the present and where they want to go.

The European debate has never really been held in modern Ireland. There is no national vision, no map indicating how we wish to proceed.

Last week’s result made one thing very clear. That debate will have to be held in earnest. The Irish people must grasp a clear view of where they want to go.

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