Refugees voting leaves lasting memory for new TD

THE emotional scenes surrounding out-of-country voting by Iraqi refugees in Copenhagen left an indelible mark on Michael McNamara in 2005.

Refugees thrilled with the opportunity to vote without fear of recrimination turned up in huge numbers on the streets of Denmark’s capital.
These images returned to the Scariff barrister and farmer following his recent election as a Labour Party TD for Clare. Deputy McNamara did a short consultancy stint in the Danish city between contracts with the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS), while he was waiting for another post with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
“I remember the sheer raw emotion of that election in Copenhagen. The Shia arrived in huge numbers to a conference centre under big black banners beating their breasts. It was the first time I witnessed political power of Shia. There were emotional scenes after people had voted.
“Some people showed up in Kurdish guerilla attire to vote and were not allowed to do so and had to come back in civilian dress.
“One man filled a ballot paper, gave it to his son and lifted him up to place the vote into the ballot box. He completely broke down in tears. It was a very powerful time of hope before the bloodshed that followed. Among the groups were some Christian minority groups from Iraq,” he recalled.
UNOPS is dedicated to implementing projects for the United Nations system, international financial institutions and governments with its global headquarters in Copenhagen.
Deputy McNamara, who became a barrister in 2006, had worked at RTÉ from 1997 to 2000, during which time he did stints with Prime Time, Questions and Answers and elections research. He declined a staff position offer, as he wanted to work abroad. He secured an internship with the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe as a human rights officer. Based in Poland from September 2000 to August 2004, one of his first major assignments came in the summer of 2001, when a crisis arose in Macedonia, amid fears the country would descend into civil war. Conflict had arisen in Macedonia between fleeing Kosovans and Slavs, exasperated by a large ethnic Albania population.
He also provided training to mayors and security officials in humanitarian law and Geneva Conventions and took testimony from people about relatives who had disappeared.
“I remember driving through one village where there was a row of people carrying what they could carry. I was with a German colleague who broke down because it reminded him of his parents’ exit from Sudan.
“Macedonia was a beautiful place. Around the time I was there, Seamus Heaney gave a poetry reading in Lake Ohrid in South Macedonia,” he said.
His main work in OSCE related to religious freedom, a topic he still holds an interest in. The group liases with the member states as they formulate positions on freedom of religion. “I am very interested in the interface between religion and politics and between Islam and politics,” he said.
He attended elections in Sudan and Indonesia, where people queued for hours to cast their ballot and in August 2004, he went with an OSCE election support team to Afghanistan for the presidential elections.
Intended to stay on and work with the United Nations Development Programme, they were instead replaced by UNOPS to organise the 2005 elections. Deputy McNamara went back to work for UNOPS to assist in the elections in Afghanistan, where those with links to armed groups or militia, members of the civil service above a certain rank or those who had committed humanitarian abuse were prevented from standing for election by law.
Deputy McNamara was the case-presenting officer on quasi-judicial independent tribunal, which examined complaints about various candidates.
He claimed that people believed to be major military figures responsible for horrendous acts were not precluded from standing and once elected, voted for parliamentary immunity for themselves.
Having spent a lot of time in Azerbaijan and Afghanistan, he learned that while revolution seems glorious and may appear to be a solution, it is nearly always bloody and the aftermath horrible.
In September 2001, he watched in horror from the main OCSE office in Warsaw as the second plane flew into the Word Trade Centre in New York.
“It was quite surreal. Woody Allen made a comment about the atrocity being like Hollywood, you have planes flying into towers and a bad guy living in a cave. This was in a period where a new liberal order was going to reign unchallenged until the certainty of the way things were would be came crashing down.
“While technology brings huge power, it also bring a huge vulnerability with it,” he said.
Deputy McNamara also studied canon law in the Catholic University of Louvain and worked with the late Kevin Boyle, who was UN Special Raconteur for Freedom of Religion and a special advisor to Mary Robinson.