BERTIE BOWS OUT; WHY WE SHOULD BE GLAD

Bertie Ahern succumbed to the inevitable this week when he tendered his resignation to take effect from May 6. This timeframe allows him to address the joint US Congress and Senate and provide him with an opportunity to say farewell on the grandeur of a world stage and add an impressive last line to his CV.
It is all a long way from the petty nit-picking probing of the Mahon Tribunal into his financial affairs, (as he seen it) which led to his departure on a very low note this week.
These revelations, and his incredulous explanations of his dodgy dealings with cronies in the mid-nineties, probably reveal the true Bertie that he so cleverly camouflaged during his political career.
In the end, he lied like an intellectually challenged eight-year old altar boy caught red-handed drinking the altar wine. It was farcical to see him digging a hole so deep for himself and then insulting the intelligence of the Irish people by his pathetic stories in trying to get out of it.
Let us credit him first with his undoubted achievement.
The torturous negotiations in bringing order and peace in Northern Ireland leading to the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 stands as his greatest contribution to the people of the 32 counties of Ireland. His skills at achieving consensus helped to bring a solution that eventually morphed into devolved Government in Northern Ireland. Bertie Ahern deserves credit for his involvement in that process – but only as part of a team. And, bear in mind that his predecessors, Albert Reynolds, along with John Hume, were the real architects of the peace that is now in place when they opened secret dialogue with Gerry Adams and Martin Mc Guinness in 1994. Ahern never gave credit to either man in all the backslapping that occurred when eventually the North started looking after its own affairs.
In fact, he shafted Reynolds in the most two-faced manner when Fianna Fail nominated Mary Mc Aleese as Presidential candidate to replace Mary Robinson, having promised Reynolds his vote, only to betray him at the last minute.
Bertie Ahern is a complex character. Being educated in politics by Charles Haughey and graduating with first class honours – “the most cunning of them all”- eliminates him from any tolerance of the notion that he was some political innocent abroad. He cultivated the image of the ordinary north-sider made good in politics by sheer hard work and a disciplined constituency organization. At the same time, he was possessed of Machevellian purpose and intent that only the ‘Master Haughey’ could have honed to supreme levels. Bertie was clever enough to build around him an army of cohorts to do the dirty work and retain his innocent “wouldn’t harm a soul” image in his power base of Drumcondra.
When the top job became his, he brought many of these comrades with him and placed them in positions of power that was not for the good of the country, but for the good of Bertie. Added to that, he appointed a huge raft of professional advisors to go along with the public servants already paid to advise him. In a country of less than four million people, Bertie had enough of staffers to run the United States.
Clever people surround themselves with cleverer people. It is doubtful if Bertie ever had an original thought in his political life such is the array of knowledge at his disposal. His inability to think for himself was cruelly exposed at the Mahon Tribunal when forensic question about his financial follies were met with the most ludicrous and incredulous answers. Once away from the strings of his political puppeteers, Bertie was a walking liability to Fianna Fail and there was no way the party was going to let him go before the tribunal again as Taoiseach and pile more agony on them.
Therefore, it is hard to make out the character of the real Bertie. Was he a buffoon who brought Fianna Fail back together with his conciliatory methods? Was he a brain who had a great vision of what he wanted to achieve, and the cunning to carry it out? Apart from his positive role in the North, what did Bertie achieve for the people who actually elected him to office?
In a nutshell, very little. He presided over unprecedented economic boom that was under way when he took office in 1997 and to which he made little contribution. His greatest act was to appoint Charlie McCreevey as Minister of Finance. McCreevey was a maverick that could bully Bertie and his ministers into his way of thinking. A range of measures introduced during his reign as Finance Minister, most notably the cutting of Capital Gains Tax from 40% to 20%, ensured that McCreevey contributed more to the Celtic Tiger than Bertie ever did, despite the former hiring more public servants than the state ever needed.
Ahern wasted the billions that reached the coffers of Government, mostly from the property boom. He must take sole responsibility for his own vanity projects and the failure of his ministers to control budgets on various projects.
It is frightening to consider what was lost on the likes of the Luas, Port Tunnel, electronic voting machines, the M50, the Ppars health IT exercise, Bertie Bowl, Aquatic Centre etc etc.
Worst of all though was the Benchmarking Commission that gave away over a billion euros to public servants that were already overpaid. This was solely Bertie’s baby.
The ability of Ahern to achieve consensus was not a skill at all. It was a weakness. He gave into the unions for the entire duration of his political life. The PR people would portray agreements a victory for common sense when, in fact, Bertie surrendered. The unions played their part in the charade and sniggered up their sleeves at the meekness of the man.
In summary, Bertie Ahern was a lucky politician who in time will be remembered not for what he done for the state, but what he didn’t do. He rode the wave of the good times he was fortunate to find himself in and then washed the proceeds down the toilet.
He departs his office, leaving the country in a mess.
He did the state no service at all.