The Race for the Áras (18 page)

He suggested that the change in the bookies' odds—from odds-against to odds-on 13:8 to 8:11, following the
REDC
Paddy Power poll of the previous week in favour of Higgins—was defining, and that the poll, which included second-preference and subsequent intentions, clearly made Higgins the favourite.

However, although reaching that conclusion, he also suggested that the retailer, independent senator, sometime television host and multimillionaire Feargal Quinn, who had recently sold the Superquinn chain of supermarkets, would make a credible candidate. He initially praised him and then somewhat damned him with the comment:

The following day another radio presenter, Matt Cooper, former editor of the
Sunday Tribune
and presenter of Today
FM
's ‘Last Word', a drivetime afternoon programme, referred to the attendance of Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh at the lunch hosted by President McAleese for Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip on the first day of their visit to Ireland. Ó Muircheartaigh revealed to Cooper that he had interviewed the Queen's son, Prince Edward, in London a year earlier at, of all places, a greyhound track. Ó Muircheartaigh was also to act act as mc for the appearance in Dublin city centre of the American president, Barack Obama, on his whistle-stop tour of the country.

Ó Muircheartaigh was to flirt with the idea of running for the Presidency. On Monday 15 August the
Evening Herald
confirmed that he was now considering a late entry into the race. He said he would make a decision on whether to run ‘shortly'.

The following day's papers carried his assertion that he had been approached by representatives of a number of political parties to stand in recent months, that he would only stand as an independent and that his decision would be made in the next ten days. He continually refused to say who had approached him from the main parties.

He added that age shouldn't be an issue for any candidate.

On Sunday 19 September 2010 Ó Muircheartaigh had given his last broadcast when he covered the all-Ireland football final between Cork and Down from Croke Park. (Two days earlier he had celebrated his eightieth birthday by climbing Brandon Mountain, a few miles from his Kerry home.) Outside the stadium, canny hawkers were selling pocket radios to fans ‘for Mícheál's last broadcast.' After the minor match Ó Muircheartaigh was led onto the pitch in front of a packed crowd of more than 81,000 people, and the president of the
GAA
, Christy Cooney, presented him with a framed oil painting of his beloved Brandon Mountain. Ó Muircheartaigh's fellow-commentator Marty Morrissey told the cheering crowd that ‘Thursday was a momentous and yet a sad morning for Cumann Lúthchleas Gael, because the man we all love in
RTE
—our hero, our idol, our friend—had decided to hang up his microphone in a few weeks' time.'

According to Ó Muircheartaigh,

Despite his active retirement, however, Ó Muircheartaigh became the second broadcaster to rule himself out of the race after an intense week of speculation about whether he could secure wide support. Now, just a few days after his eighty-first birthday, he said he would not be contesting for the Park.

 

Meanwhile fierce debate raged on Fianna Fáil's confidential internet discussion group about Micheál Martin's handling of the presidential race. The flavour of many of the comments was that Éamon de Valera would be turning in his grave. The president of the University of Limerick Students' Union, Derek Daly, went a step further, labelling the party leader a ‘disgrace' over his handling of the presidential election—comments that caused controversy when they ended up in the national press.

On the same day that the Queen of England was visiting Áras an Uachtaráin the social media campaign to have the former
RTE
presenter (now Lyric
FM
presenter) Marty Whelan nominated as a candidate had taken off, and it was reported in the print media. Whelan said he was ‘enjoying the fun of it, and I think the people behind the campaign are having fun with it. I don't even have a Facebook page, to be honest, but it seems like I have a bit of support.' A few days later he made it clear that he was not seeking a nomination.

The columnist Shane Hegarty of the
Irish Times
, with his tongue firmly in cheek, begged to differ with Whelan's decision.

Ten days earlier a newly established Facebook page and Twitter site had attracted hundreds of people to ‘like' it within a couple of hours. The page was the beginning of a campaign: Martin Sheen for President. This was the first of a series of celebrity campaigns, none of which existed in reality but all providing extra colour and entertainment. Sheen was the American actor who had famously starred in
Apocalypse Now
and, more relevantly, the blockbusting nbc series ‘The West Wing', in which he played Josiah Bartlet, fictional President of the United States. The Facebook page was set up by Emmet Murphy, a native of Douglas, Cork, and was serious in tone—certainly not tongue-in-cheek—and contained numerous clips from the popular ‘West Wing' series. It also attracted widespread press coverage in the United States. Sheen could qualify to run for President of Ireland because his mother, Mary Anne Phelan, was an Irish citizen. She was born in Borrisokane, Co. Tipperary, in 1903 and later married Francisco Estévez, Sheen's father.

The seventy-year-old actor is a well-known human rights activist and has been described as the best actor never to get an Oscar. A few years earlier he attended the National University of Ireland, Galway, as a mature student in English literature, philosophy and oceanography. During his stay in Barna, on the west coast, he got to know one of his local
TD
s, Michael D. Higgins.

 

On Monday 22 August the former
TG
4 weather presenter Dáithí Ó Sé was live on
RTE
1 presenting the annual Rose of Tralee programme. Over two nights, talented and beautiful women with Irish connections from all over the world would vie for the coveted title. The light-entertainment programme was full of dancing, music, poetry, recitations and craic. Politics was certainly not on the agenda. And canvassing for any candidate in any political race while live on air would be firmly frowned on.

That was until the Southern California Rose, Molly O'Keefe, came on stage. A television producer, she was fondly teased from the audience by family and friends as ‘Mollywood'. She told the packed audience that she was a huge fan of Martin Sheen.

‘Did you know there's a Facebook campaign to make him our next President?' asked the compere.

‘I'm a fan. That doesn't surprise me at all. President Bartlet was a powerful man,' said the Rose of Hollywood, lending her support to the online campaign.

By the following Saturday more than five thousand people had signed up to the Martin Sheen for President site. However, at a public appearance in the United States with his son Emilio Estevez, Sheen insisted that he was flattered but had no intention of campaigning for the office. He subsequently issued a statement to the Facebook campaign confirming his decision and endorsing another candidate.

Facebook had also hosted another Sheen for President page, but it was for his troubled son Charlie—and for the American Presidency.

 

On the same day Mary Minihan of the
Irish Times
explored a previously little-discussed aspect of the Constitution of Ireland with the former presidential adviser Bríd Rosney, who continued to act for Mary Robinson, former President and now United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, who was also one of Nelson Mandela's select group of ‘Elders'. Robinson had established her own foundation, the Mary Robinson Foundation—Climate Justice, and in that role, and as a patron of Oxfam, she had recently returned from Somalia, a country she had previously visited as President and that was again in the throes of a terrible famine.

Under article 12.4.4 of the Constitution, former or retiring Presidents ‘may become candidates on their own nomination.' The other two avenues were for candidates to be nominated by twenty members of the Oireachtas or four local councils. Would Robinson consider entering the field again? She had been asked to consider her position and had been urged to put her name forward again, as confirmed by Rosney.

For the first time in weeks the Sunday papers carried nominal coverage of the race for the Áras. There was analysis and some comment but nothing to inflame or upset the candidates or their hawk-eyed teams of media advisers.

On Monday 29 August, Seán Gallagher set out his stall in an article written at the invitation of the
Irish Sun
. His message was honed, referring to his own unemployment—something that many in the lower social demographic groups who read the
Irish Sun
could associate with—and to his plan to support work initiatives and build on the country's successes. It was a positive message of hope and ‘can do', and there was an absence of the woolliness of thought and aspiration that had been expressed by candidates previously. ‘I've been unemployed through no fault of my own three times since the early eighties,' he wrote, saying that unemployment, which prompted feelings of despair and hopelessness, ‘is eating away at the very fabric of society and of communities.' For Gallagher, unemployment

 

The
Sunday Independent
columnist Eilis O'Hanlon, in the absence of any news or new developments about the race for the Áras, provided a thought-provoking piece about the campaign so far and about the type of candidate the electorate would embrace come 27 October.