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Arrogant, ignorant, self-loving life of Bertie


Bertie Ahern’s sage pronouncements this week in the newspaper that employs him were staggering in their arrogance. The smugness of his statements, the infuriating self-love and the complete ignorance of reality were quite unbelievable. The interview read like satire.
He didn’t rule out running for the position of president but seemed unwilling simply because it would be difficult for anyone from Fianna Fáil to win in the current climate. Nothing to do with him you understand, it’s all down to the smoking wreckage of the party he helped snuff out, which might tarnish his halo were he to run under its banner.
How terrible for Bertie, how that rotten pair of ‘Fs’ continues to cling to him, even now that he has been promoted to his new position of sports pundit for a gutter red top and, of course, statesman in stasis. With the benefit of hindsight, maybe he was better qualified than most to make pronouncements about the “race to the bottom”.
I imagine Bertie Ahern smoking a massive cigar on a recliner and quaffing fine champagne as he dictated, sorry ‘gave’ the interview to the News of the World. All the while scoffing at his successors’ inability to handle the media properly. Because this is essentially what Bertie has tried to peddle.
The only reason Fianna Fáil is in trouble now is because Cowen and those around him have not handled the media the way he did. Perhaps we should respect him in his opinion – after all, he had the deep knowledge, good judgement and foresight to stuff himself into a kitchen cupboard to peddle newspapers knowing, instinctively, it would woo the population he had led into the recession.
This latest outburst on the part of the former Taoiseach is a perfect example of what the man actually thinks of the people of Ireland. Give them sound bites and they will be fine, is his mantra. Wear an oul jacket and go to games and convince them that you are the same as them and they will eat out of your hand. The smug, smirking former emperor, starved of the limelight, has himself blown the nudity and exposed what nobody really wanted to see.
This is perhaps something of a misrepresentation. There were plenty of people who were very well aware of Bertie’s modus operandi and they did nothing to oust him because they too were feasting at the same trough as their leader.
The Fianna Fáil party has a lot to answer for. Clearly from the interview our former lord and master was so good as to give, nobody gave him an indication that he was leading the country to ruin. “Nobody advised me, no economist, all those people now writing books saying ‘I told you so’ – none of them.” What a relief to know that nobody told him. We were labouring under the impression that he did it on purpose against the best advice and that all those other people such as economists and authors were the ones we elected to run the country.
It was not the idea of Bertie that forced the Fianna Fáil elite to oust him, it was the smell. Only when he became more of an embarrassment than a golden boy did they feel motivated to push him. He resigned, according to the BBC, “amid a deepening crisis surrounding his personal finances”. It can be very easy to forget this important fact when that jovial Del Boy appears before us in print or on screen. Fianna Fáil stuck with their three-time-winner until they were forced to let him go. If he could have weathered the storm, Cowen would have been suppressed at least until another election could have been won and everybody’s pensions, ministerial or common, could have been assured.
Minister for Defence Tony Killeen told us this week he feels that an election will most likely be held in March. As it looms, we should keep Bertie firmly in our minds. Those who are housed at numbers 10, 11 and 12 Downing Street are the prime minister, the chancellor of the exchequer and the prime minister’s press officer respectively. Reports are circulating of Fine Gael possessing more than €2 million worth of a war chest to squander on winning the vote.
Fianna Fáil are said, in the same reports, to be €3m down. A lot of money will be spent in the run-up to the election on posters, campaigns and propaganda and all of it will aim to colour the judgement of the people who ultimately step into that booth, decide who will lead them for the next five years and live with the consequences.
Politicians view the electorate as a dangerous mule who must be corralled, controlled and dazzled into submission, it is up to the electorate to resist this and make decisions based on policy, integrity and ideals. These three things must be held by the voter. I am not referring in any way, shape or form to what politicians will sell the public in the run-up to the election. Who will represent you? Who will do the things you want them to do? Who will assure your future when you are old and who will ensure that the children your children will bear will enjoy a life that is not wasted slaving to generate profits for international corporations who will flee when a better deal is offered elsewhere?
No candidate standing in Clare when the election is called could offer this and they would be disingenuous if they did. That will not stop them getting the finest haircuts, best clothes and most expensive photographers to make them look like they might. When you see their posters, when their acolytes call to your door, stop and ask yourself – how much can this person honestly bring change or benefit to my life?
Ask yourself how much freedom any Irish government elected next time around will have to make decisions that benefit the population? Then imagine Bertie Ahern in a cupboard telling you he has the inside scoop on exactly what the answer is.

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