It goes without saying that a significant section of the Irish public will agree wholeheartedly with President Higgins when he says – as he did this weekend – that the Republic should not join NATO. It further goes without saying that a significant section of the public have neither any interest in, or time for, an argument that the President should not say what he thinks – even if he technically has the right to do so – for the sake of the health of his office, and the health of our democracy.
The sight of the President of Young Fine Gael – an earnest young chap in his twenties – calling the octogenarian President “a thundering disgrace” will probably do little to quell the sense of his supporters that the President is imparting wisdom to a Government that has lost the run of itself.
But notably, the President has been very careful, in expanding the scope of his office, only to pick fights that he can win: Attacking the Government’s housing policy directly was a safe play, since the Government’s housing policy record is unpopular. Attacking them on neutrality is similarly safe, because his own usurpation of power will go unnoticed in all the palaver about whether or not he is right. He has yet to challenge the Government openly on any subject where polls have not shown him to be on relatively safe ground.
The Government, fearing the President’s popularity, will let him get away with it, as they have done on every previous occasion where he set himself up as a sort of part-time leader of the opposition.
But the President cannot have it both ways: He cannot be both above politics and deeply involved in political commentary. If he is free to speak his mind on foreign policy, then he is surely also free to speak out on a range of other policy areas.
So what are his views on hate speech? Does he agree with the Government that, in the words of a Green Senator, we must restrict freedom for the common good? Does he regret signing all of the Government’s covid restrictions into law? Where was his voice when people were being excluded from Irish society for the (as it turned out) perfectly rational decision to decline a covid vaccine?
If the President wishes to behave like a normal everyday partisan politician, then he should be treated as one. The deference customarily extended to his office by the press should be withdrawn: Since he is a man who seems intent on using his voice as and when he pleases, it should obviously give rise to questions about his silence on other topics as well. If the Irish people are to have a Presidency whose role it is to speak up for them against their own Government, then where is that President when he is needed? Where is he for Irish farmers, facing Government intrusion on their cattle herds? Where is he for Irish communities feeling the brunt of refugee resettlement policy? Where is he for Irish women finding the name of their gender being erased in official documents?
Instead, the President seems content to bluster on a small number of subjects dear to his own heart, and because of the deference still extended to him, basic questions of that bluster are not asked. It is power without accountability.
For example, what almost nobody will notice in all of this is that the President is dishonestly fighting a straw man, because the Irish Government has not proposed joining NATO. In fact, Micheál Martin made it clear last month that joining NATO was not on the Government’s agenda.
What has been discussed is an abandoning of Ireland’s “triple lock” position – this is the mechanism which requires the UN security council to approve the deployment of Irish troops overseas. It provides the five countries with a permanent seat on that body – the US, the UK, France, Russia, and China – with an effective veto over the Irish armed forces, since any one of the five can refuse to grant permission for the deployment of Irish troops. Even in a peacekeeping capacity. It is, one might have thought, a strange kind of neutrality that allows His Majesty’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office to decide where and when Irish soldiers go.
The President, of course, will not have to account for the dishonesty of his intervention because of the way he is allowed to have it both ways: Above politics when it comes to being criticised and questioned, and yet free to blather away without consequence when he feels like it. No other politician has this privilege: Not the Taoiseach, not the leader of the opposition, and certainly not some ordinary citizen at a protest.
We need not guess what the consequences of this will be: Already, a range of populists from left and right will be eyeing the next Presidential election in 2025. It is not beyond the realms of the imagination that we will then have a President prone to saying things like “all illegal migrants should be deported”.
If we do, and we end up with a constitutional crisis as a result, we should remember who authored that mess.