A Fianna Fáil MEP has lamented that, with Jim Gavin no longer in the running for the Presidential election, there is now no candidate “in the centre” of the other two candidates, claiming that Heather Humphreys belongs to the political Right.
Speaking on Virgin Media’s ‘The Tonight Show’ on Wednesday night, Cynthia Ní Mhurchú was speaking about the implosion of the Jim Gavin campaign following a scandal regarding unpaid debts as a landlord from 2009.
Now with Gavin bowing out of the election, the contest is a two-person race between Fine Gael’s Heather Humphreys and Socialist Leftwing Independent Catherine Connolly.
“I’m very worried about the fact that there is no Fianna Fáil candidate now in the centre, and that we’ve got two polar opposites,” Ní Mhurchú said.
Asked if she believed Heather Humphreys was a “rightwing” candidate, Ní Mhurchú replied that “Heather Humphreys is right-of centre.”
“Heather Humphreys is centre-right,” she continued.
“The Fianna Fáil candidate would have been centre-left.”
However, she defended Humphreys regardless.
“Heather Humphreys is pro-Ireland, pro-Europe, pro-business, and all of the things that we want to thrive and exhibit and showcase throughout not just Ireland…but also on the European stage and on the world stage,” she said.
“We do not need somebody like Catherine Connolly – I believe, and it’s only my opinion – in the office of Áras an Uachtárain re-defining the Constitution in some way.”
Notably, Fine Gael self-identifies as centre-left.
On its website, Fine Gael describes itself as “a party of the progressive centre.”
According to Merriam Webster dictionary, “The words liberalism and progressivism are both associated with the political left and are sometimes used interchangeably to refer to the same basic leftist political philosophy that government should be used to improve the lives of the citizenry.”