Intelligencer

Intelligencer

April 9, 2008

Adams Prefers Cowen?

“STRAIGHTFORWARD, down to earth, intelligent politician.” Those were the words Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams used to describe Ireland’s taoiseach (prime minister) designate Brian Cowen last week.

Those are warm words and contrast significantly with the less than ringing endorsement Adams gave to Bertie Ahern when asked to eulogize the retiring Fianna Fail leader on the day he announced he was stepping down.

“What we saw today was a taoiseach bowing out in a very gracious and graceful way and we should look at the good things that he has done as well as the not so good things that he has done,” Adams said.

Behind all that is a once warm relationship that cooled significantly in the past two years as Adams felt the Irish government was not doing enough to drive the peace process.

Privately, Sinn Fein people will say that were it not for the back channel between Sinn Fein and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, many of the major advances would not have happened because Ahern seemed unwilling to push for critical changes.

Fianna Fail would probably argue that Sinn Fein was being unrealistic in what could be accomplished. Besides, the fact that both parties were competing for votes in the general election that loomed over the past two years meant that Fianna Fail were never going to do Sinn Fein any favors.

It was striking how warm the Adams comments about Cowen were. Straightforward is certainly an adjective often applied to Cowen, but it is also in contrast to Ahern’s roundabout way of negotiating which often left parties wondering what exactly he intended. There will be little of that with Cowen, it seems.

Cowen is also considered an old fashioned Nationalist from a rural background who has no hint of scandal in his background, which Bertie certainly had his last few years in power.

First Criticism Of Cowen

COWEN had hardly occupied his new exalted role as incoming taoiseach when the first volley across his bows came.

It was hardly surprising that it came from Fintan O’Toole, the enfant terrible of Irish journalism who remarked in his column in The Irish Times that he could find no significant accomplishment by Cowen in all his years in office, which included holding four ministries.

“While it would be unfair to say Brian Cowen has risen without trace, his track record is one of caution, not courage. It is hard to pin down a single significant achievement in office,” said O’Toole.

He warned Cowen that he could end up like British Prime Minster Gordon Brown, who succeeded Blair without a contest and has struggled mightily since.

O’Toole has a radical suggestion for Cowen to hit the ground running. “There is, as his extraordinary luck would have it, a very quick way to make a fundamental statement that, with hard times coming, he has the guts to be a leader. It is to sack Mary Harney as minister for health,” O’Toole wrote.

Harney is in the toughest government department of all, one bedeviled by scandal and controversy, but sacking her would be a major move that would cause huge controversy. No doubt Cowen will be getting many such pieces of advice in the weeks and months ahead.

A New Foreign Minister?

THE changing of the guard in Dublin likely means a new minister for foreign affairs, according to newspaper reports. Cowen will be shuffling his cabinet and it is expected that present Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern will move to a new portfolio.

There is speculation as to who might replace him. Could Ireland have its first ever female foreign minister with Mary Hanafin, currently in education, or Mary Coughlan, currently in agriculture?

Or will it be Micheal Martin, currently in enterprise, Brian Lenihan, currently in justice, or Noel Dempsey, currently at the transportation ministry?

Generally foreign affairs is considered the second plum job after finance, so whoever gets it will be a senior figure.

Adams Only One Left

WITH the departure of Bertie Ahern, Gerry Adams is now the only party leader left from the original seven party leaders who signed the Good Friday Agreement.

The 10th anniversary this next week and technically Ahern will still be in power, but Tony Blair, David Ervine from the Progressive Unionist Party, Monica McWilliams from the Women’s Coalition, John Hume from the SDLP and David Trimble from the Ulster Unionist Party have all left the stage.

In one case, that of the Women’s Coalition, the party itself has ceased to exist, while Ervine died at a tragically young age of a brain hemorrhage. Of course Ian Paisley did not sign the agreement, but he too is about to leave the stage, leaving a new cast of characters in place.

Even Adams has come under pressure from the Andersonstown News, his hometown paper, which recently ran an article sharply critical of his handling of issues of random street violence in his constituency.

Adams made an extraordinary statement this week that the IRA was not going to come back to police some lawless areas like some residents had been demanding.

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