Paul Malpas

Tomorrow, October 27th 2011 sees the end of the political circus that is the Irish Presidential Election.  This political sideshow as been running officially now for two months, although some of the characters have been squaring up for over a year and it has been taking our hearts and minds off the job in hand, which is digging our way out of the financial turmoil, in part brought on by the last Fianna Fail government and in part by the greed of the international banking system.  Enda Kenny, the Irish Prime Minister, could not have played his cards better than to have this hysterical floorshow distracting us this long while.

It has been a seven horse race, but using the word horse in this contest is a massive term of abuse to our equine friends, with a tawdry a bunch of wannabes as you could ever imagine.  To get into the frame you have to be a citizen of the state, over 35 years old and be nominated by at least 20 serving members of the Oireachtas, the Irish Parliament. or if you are of independent bent, you have to have the support of at least four county or city councils.

This election is taking place at the end of the present President’s second term of office.  Mrs Mary McAleese for 14 years and Mrs Mary Robinson before her have elevated this position to one with international clout but unfortunately in this new bunch of candidates there does not appear to be one of the same calibre.

The three political parties with 20 or more members of the Oireachtas who can nominate a party representative are Fine Gail, the Labour Party and Fianna Fail.  Fine Gail eventually elected Gay Mitchell, a Dublin MEP, as their candidate; the Labour Party elected Michael D. Higgins, a long serving TD and Senate member, although Fergus Finlay of Bernardo’s, my original fancy, put up a good fight.  Fianna Fail, still hurting from their 2010 hammering in the Dail elections of 2010, hummed and aghed for months before deciding not to run a candidate.  Sinn Fein who did not have enough seats in the Oireachtas (17 only), sought the help of four independent TDs, Michael Healey-Rae and Tom Fleming, both from South Kerry, Ming Flanagan from Roscommon and Finian McGrath from Dublin and nominated Martin McGiunness, the darling boy from Derry.  I suppose it does show the political affiliation of these so called independent TDs if ever the shit hits the fan over here.

On top of these three a number of independent candidates sought the support of 20 Oireachtas members.  This turned into a Lannigan’s ball with the candidates stepping in and out and eventually nobody in the end being able to satisfy all the criteria necessary.

The independent minded and thicker skinned of the survivors then approached the councils and eventually four of them gained the right credentials.  Mary Davis received 13 council nominations, Sean Gallagher received the necessary four.  David Norris having tried the Oireachtas path and pulled out and then tried again, eventually impressed four councils on the eastern seaboard to back him and last and least, Dana Rosemary Scallon persuaded four councils to nominate her, one of which was Roscommon County Council, my bete noir, which showed its true colours in spades with this nomination.

So by the 28th September the scene was set for this 30 day tango to take place.  Seven candidates, all arguing and fighting among themselves like a crowd of fishwives with not a scintilla of sense or positivity coming from any of them.  In order of my preference I will try and paint a brief picture of each:-

Michael D. Higgins, my eventual choice, educated at University College, Galway and Manchester University, who by far outshone all the others, in that he had by far the fewer skeletons in the cupboard.  Smoking a spliff in the States 50 years ago as a student and by being a member of Fianna Fail in 1966, his biggest sins.  He is 70 years old and that might be too much for seven years in such a demanding role, made so by the last two female incumbants, but not by the previous male recipients of this position.  He is the only candidate to be perfectly fluent in Irish which seems to matter to some in this country.

Mary Davis is 58 years old, educated at Leeds University and the University of Alberta in Canada, has spent her life physically educating the disabled.  She is a “Committee Woman” who has developed the quango spirit and is officially described as a social entrepreneur, which needs some kind of explanation for me to understand the term, earning your money as an entrepreneur and a quango sitter appear in direct opposition to each other.  To put it mildly, Mary, although probably a very nice woman, is neither one thing or the other, I would consider her to be translucent, nothingness personified, which is a pity really as the position calls out for a woman.  Most women have empathy in bucket loads, look at the last two presidents and empathy is the keyword of presidency.  Men do not seem to have this quality.

David Norris, a 68 year old Joycean scholar who was educated at Trinity College in Dublin and has more or less championed gay rights in Ireland for 38 years.  He will, if elected, be the first openly gay head of state in the world.  A gifted man who has unfortunately turned this whole charade into something less than a fairground attraction, using his snobbish airs to their full malfunction.  Typically his gay history caught up with him when it was reported that he had sent a letter on parliamentary paper, pleading with an Israeli court for clemency for his erstwhile lover, Ezra Nawi, who had been convicted of the statutory rape of a 15 year old boy.  Norris was highly fancied at the beginning of the campaign but as each of the 30 days has ticked by, so as his support.  Certainly if elected he would make an entertaining President but I think gravitas matters more and that is why Higgins is my man.

As far as the other four candidates are concerned I cannot separate them, they are all equally poor in one or more characteristic or other.  I would not and will not honour them with a transfer vote.  They are:-

Sean Gallagher, aged 49, who says he is an independent but he is in fact steeped from head to toe in Fianna Fail politics, which he has been trying to disassociate himself from for the whole of the campaign.  Educated at Ballyhaise Agricultural College in Cavan and at NUI Maynoth, he is another of these political/professional entrepreneurs who looks as though he has never done a days work in his life but has attended many a committee meeting.  In the last week of the campaign his approach seems to have burst through and he held a massive lead going into the last few days, but as with all things Fianna Fail, his past caught up with him and brown envelopes containing nothing less than 5,000 euros came tumbling out of the cupboard.

Martin McGuinness born in 1950 and is currently deputy First Minister in Niorthern Ireland.  Although never having been troubled with anything other than a basic education, he preferred the School of Hard Knocks and the University of Life, he is a very able and now serious politician.  However as with everybody who takes the violent approach,  his being through the IRA, the past always catches up.  The majority of people cannot stand the way the IRA sought their way through the morass and as the campaign went on he was more and more often confronted with the families of IRA victims.  None more so than the family of Garda detective Gerry McCabe who was shot dead in Adare in Limerick in 1996.  I can forgive McGuinness most things but I learn that he is a member of the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association and I can never trust a man who will not have a drink.  Probably his claim to fame is that he had a cousin, Patrick McGuinness, who taught my daughter French at Oxford University and did an excellent job.

Gay Mitchell is 59 years old and was educated at Dublin Institute of Technology and at Queen’s, Belfast.  He is a career politician who has served Fine Gail all his life without distinction.  The best that can be said of him is that he is small and insignificant, which just about sums up the qualities necessary to become a political big wig in Ireland.  His denials of truths are historic and legendary and the only thing going for him is that his cousin is a famous Dublin gangster.

Last and least is Dana Rosemary Scallon, born in 1951 but answers to any age between 20 and 30 and whose only claim to high office is that she won the Eurovision Song Contest in 1970.  A fellow Derry child along with McGuinness she also received a scant education.  Her music career gave her the propulsion she needed to enter politics but her campaigns on the Catholic ticket, especially her opposition to abortion, contraception and divorce, especially in this clerical abuse atmosphere have led to a massive drop in sympathy for her cause.  Her failure to win over support as led to all kinds of nonsense, not least her reports of an attempted assassination attempt when a tyre burst on her car.  Her lack of intelligence and the patronising old fashioned way she has with voters does not help her cause either.  She will be lucky not to lose her chance of the government  reimbursing her election expenses as she is forecast to receive only about 1% of the vote and this amount could be in the region of 200,000 euros.  Not to be sniffed at in these impoverished times.

So there we have it, a right collection of toe rags and I do pity the state of Ireland’s adult qualities if this is all they can put up, but it may be that the Presidential Office is not worth the seven years at 249,014 euros per annum after all the candidates have mauled themselves to death after 30 days and when the media can tell everybody when was the last time each candidate had picked their nose or even worse.  The wise man or woman is better to steer clear and leave it to the eejits.

This week the last chapter of The Murphy Report can now be published.  You remember the Murphy Report, issued in November 2009 and headed by Judge Yvonne Murphy, into how the Catholic Church in Ireland dealt with the mass of allegations of clerical abuse in the Archdiocese of Dublin in the period 1975 -2004 and how the Church covered up this abuse.

Chapter 19 of this Report was omitted at the time of publication because it dealt with ongoing prosecutions of clergy and the last and arguably the most serious case was concluded this week and concerned the paedophilic behaviour of a  now laicised priest, 57 year old Anthony Walsh, who received a 16 year prison sentence for 17 counts of sexual abuse on three boys including five counts of buggery on one boy.  The last four years of this sentence were suspended as the judge had received a report from a psychiatrist saying that it was very unlikely that he would offend again.  This was Walsh’s third admittance to state prisons for offences of this nature.

It seems that throughout his priestly career the hierarchy of the Archdiocese, in the form of Canons, Monsignors, Auxillary Bishops, Bishops, Archbishops and Cardinals, even Pope John Paul II for four years, all knew of this man’s predilictions, from the time he was being educated in seminary, through his priesthood until he was laicised in 1996.  Some 23 years of paedophilic mayhem.

To have a better understanding of this perverts predations, I will put his career into a chronological framework.

1973 -1978.  A Coolock boy, Anthony Walsh, was educated in seminary, visiting various parishes in his role  as lector, acolyte and deacon  and awaiting the definitive call of the bishop, to advance himself to priesthood.  For it is only when the bishop is satisfied that a seminarian will make a good priest does he give this call.  Now it seems that in this five or six year period as a seminarian, rumour abounded of his perverse deeds.  So how did the Bishop, undoubtedly knowing of these rumours, call him to the priesthood unless this type of behaviour was excepted practice for a Catholic priest.

1978.  Ordained a priest and within weeks was abusing one of the altar boys who served at his Ordination Mass and who eventually gained some satisfaction this week.

1978 -1986.  Assistant priest at Ballyfermot Church in Dublin, adjacent to Phoenix Park where he came under the wing of that charasmatic priest Fr. Michael Cleary, the same Fr. Cleary who sang at the Pope’s visit to Dublin in 1981 and who by this time had fathered two sons with his housekeeper.  Fr. Cleary had a radio show and a travelling band of priests who went under the name of “All Priests Show”.  In this band Fr. Tony Walsh was a guitar player and Elvis impersonator.  He was in a very strong position and his seniors did not wish to rock the boat.  He was in charge of a group of 60+ altarboys and was manager of that famous institution in those days “The Children’s Mass” every week at Ballyfermot church.  On top of that he had the run of all the National Schools (Junior Scools) in the area.  For a man of his tendency it could be said  that he was on the pig’s back, if it was not so serious and the fact was it was on childrens’  backs he was.

During all this time he was subject to numerous complaints and allegations but between Fr. Michael Cleary, Monsignor Alex Stenson, the Chancellor of the Archdiocese and Canon lawyer and Auxillary Bishop James Kavanagh, they managed to fob most of these charges off by saying that Walsh was sorry for his sins and that Archbishop Dermot Ryan was dealing with the matter.  For all these abusing eight years nothing happened to Fr. Walsh until he was transferred to Westland Row parish.

1986 -1988.  Esconced in Westland Row parish in the centre of Dublin he continued his merry way abusing young boys until and no longer under the patronage of Fr. Cleary he was removed from parish duties and sent to a monastery or secure institution while Archbishop Connell applied to have him laicised by writing to the Pope for permission.

1987.  Served one year imprisonment for the abuse of two boys in Westland Row

1988 – 1996  For a few years the Vatican vacillated thinking that a longer spell in the monastery might cure him but it was only after four years and appeals by an Archdiocesan committee led by Connell and supported by Bishops Willie Walsh and John MacAreavey that the Pope granted a licence for laicisation.  Their actions would have been commendable during this process if only they had told others but they did not and Walsh landed up at a requiem mass for some old man and was allowed to take part in the ceremony after which he raped the grandson of the deceased in the church toilets after the service.

!996 – 2001.  He spent most of this time in prison for further abuses of young boys having received a six year term for which he served just less than five years.

2002 – 2010 Fighting a legal battle with the barristers of other victims.  He and his defence team trying every trick in the book to thwart the legal process until finally this week justice was eventually meted out and for three Ballyfermot boys who had had their lives ruined by this man 30 years previously and who had gone through various stages of torment, some degree of closure was given.

One wonders whether Walsh gained strength in his defence, from the 2002 indemnity that the Fianna Fail Minister for Justice, The Cahirciveen man, John O’Donoghue, had pushed through the Dail that said that the State would pick up 90% of all costs  arising from clerical abuse and whether any of this fund went towards paying for his long and protracted defence.  Because I am sure that a poor boy from Coolock could not afford this, eight years of legal argument, Elvis impersonator or not and if this fund did figure in his accountancy perhaps in these very straightened times the tax payers of Ireland should be thinking that this daft Kerry man’s idea should be chucked in the bin and the billion euro fund used for something more substantial.

Scenes played out on the television screens yesterday in Greece made me think of that day in July 1789 when the sans culottes stormed the Bastille in Paris and put in motion the violence that led to 10 years of the French Revolution, where most of the second estate (the nobility or those that were exempt from tax) fled the country or if dilatory, were executed.  This revolution took France a long time to recover from and get back on its fiscal feet, but it certainly turned their medieval form of government around and also that of most other developed countries round the world.  In fact it put the shit up the British Government so much that it was many years before they recovered their savoir faire. They thought the revolution would come to England and it certainly made for improvement in political thinking in the land of John Bull.

The very same conditions that festered the French revolution into being are occurring in Ireland and England at the moment.  Years of fiscal mismanagement have taken their toll.  The First Estate (The Clergy) have been running rampant for years and the Second Estate (The Nobility now in the form of bankers, politicians and lawyers) have all  deliberately and cynically conned us, the Third Estate, for long enough.  They need all clearing out, and it is up to us the sans culottes, the disenchanted, the deceived, call us what you like, to start a revolution.

In Ireland where the First Estate has virtually vanished up its own arsehole and where despite the recent blip in the polls, the Fianna Fail government, who are  part of the Second Estate is still reaching out its scrawny arm to every town in Ireland and telling the people what they can and cannot do and appointing ill-qualified  officers of government to all aspects of life, even as far down as managers of Social Welfare Offices.  These officers do not need to be qualified for the job in hand, they just need to preach the Fianna Fail gospel and the grateful masses attending will then praise the lord or whatever Cowan calls himself these days.  The other parties have no chance whilst this subterfuge or legerdemain continues.

In England, the First Estate is a docile little kitten with no voice, the Second Estate consisting of paedophilic politicians, grafting bankers, self appointed lords and a legal system containing members of the first three categories, allows blackmail and corruption to run rife and in fact, if you are not being blackmailed by some other obnoxious offender you will get nowhere. The Third Estate is just right for revolution.  Life is has become one big conspiracy theory and conspiracy is slowly becoming the truth.  The case of Hollie Greig is one such point.  Hollie, a Downs Syndrome girl cannot get justice for her abuse because her paedophilic ring of abusers in Aberdeen pull strings in Edinburgh and in London.  But the day has come the revolution has arrived, the truth will out and let us defrock this corrupt Second Estate of ours.

It is no use having the revolution in Greece, Portugal or Spain, they are not big enough to influence the world, although I can see the possibility of having something like a World Cup Draw for disillusioned revolutionary peoples. No, those countries are not powerful enough, let us have it in a country with a strong establishment, an establishment that has got too big for its boots.  Let us start the revolution in England and its half brother Ireland.

We have been told recovery due to fiscal mismanagement is going to take years, the French Revolution with all its violence took 10 years, my non-violent revolution based on civil disobedience will or might take longer but we will vanquish the bastards of the Second Estate.  We  will write another Declaration of Rights of Man and of the Citizen and this time make it work.  The Philosophes will be vindicated.

As Richard Price, a Dissenter, said in his keynote speech to the Society for the Commemoration of the Revolution of Great Britain in 1789:-

Tremble all ye oppressors of the world!  Take warning all ye supporters of slavish governments……Call no more reformation; innovation.  You cannot hold the world in darkness.  Struggle no longer against increasing light and liberality.  Restore to mankind their rights; and consent to the correction of abuses, before they and you are destroyed together.

The forces of oppression,  tyranny and misery need to be overcome.

Vive Liberte, Egalite et Fraternite.

It is sad that the talentless ignoramuses who inhabit the Fine Gael party have done enough to make sure that George Lee threw in the towel with their hapless party.  Whether through ignorance, disbelief or pure jealousy, these clueless politicians decided to give George the bums rush and thus deny Irish politics of the one talented specimen the Dail had. These sons of publicans and solicitors sons, who have shuffled in their father’s footsteps since 1922 have shown themselves to be the diluted talent of diluted talent.

Why cannot the talented people in our society not rise to the top in the political echelon, the money ain’t that bad and there is plenty of time to earn more  if everyone forgot about the fact that politicians are needed as funereal appendages and fillers-in of pot holes?  The Dail only meets for 80 days per year so that leaves plenty of time for the talented and truthful to earn an extra crust.  It is only the “Never done a day’s work in his life” politician, who these days inhabit the Dail and pay regular lip-service to the incumbent arseholes who dwell in the Cabinet Office and pass legislation that they have probably read about on the backs of cornflake packets. Funeral attendance and road maintenance should be left to the equally talentless and hibernatory local authorities and semi-grieving friends and family.  Let the politicians do what they should be doing ie, govern, and they surely would if they had that gift.

The sons of father’s sons have proved time and time again in all historic societies that they have neither the wit nor the acumen to deal successfully with matters of import.  Therefore why not start again.  Form a new party.

A new party filled with people of talent, not hucksters and corner-boys who are in the system because they are no good at anything else.  People believe George and his ilk because they know he speaks the truth, they know he is not trotting out garbage.  The listeners to the Lifeline programme proved that the other day when in a snap poll a massive % voted for the correctness of George Lee’s actions in the face of disapproval and criticism by the politicians.

The Progressive Democrats did it nearly 30 years ago and managed to hold on to a semblance of power for a long time, but when they got fed up kicking Charlie Haughey’s arse, which was their raison d’etre, they reverted back to whence they came, members of the Fianna Fail party.

This new party of sense, truth and talent could take this country by the scruff of the electorate’s neck and shake out these 90 year old encumbrances that make people take the FF or FG side no matter what.  The country is in a mess like it has never been since the Famine.  The people want a new way.  It is there for the taking and I am sure there is enough commercial money knocking about to ensure early funding.  Commercial money that does not want to see itself squandered like it has been; commercial money that is not after a regular supply of brown envelopes. This new way is  a tangible and necessary process.  So arise George Lee and David McWilliams, you two could be the Daniel O’Connells of the 21st century in Irish politics.  It will not be easy but you are young enough and good enough.