A Victory for the "Left"?: A Presidential Retrospective

As the dust settles on Ireland’s first contested presidential election in 14 years, the social democratic left’s preferred candidate stands as undisputed victor. The final result landed Catherine Connolly with 63% of first preference votes, with her competitor, Fine Gael’s Heather Humphreys, sitting at 29%.

While Connolly was objectively the better candidate – with commitments to neutrality and anti-militarism – it would be a mistake to view her entry into Áras an Uachtarán as a victory for the working class. While the Presidency is an almost entirely symbolic role, it is vital that communists analyse not only the substance of the campaign, but the character of the alliance which constituted Connolly’s support.

Connolly drew support from a wide variety of groups, such as People Before Profit, both Workers’ Parties, and the Communist Party of Ireland, but the really crucial backing came from the social democratic parties currently sitting in opposition in the Dáil – Sinn Féin, the Social Democrats, the Green Party and Connolly’s old party, the Labour Party. Without these, Connolly would never have received the nominations necessary to get herself on the ballot.

Let’s take a look at this “Left” alliance, a clear prelude to a possible electoral strategy for a “Left” government. While the nature of the presidential campaign did not necessitate any type of fleshed-out shared programme, any party that self-describes as on the left would have found a place in this alliance. In conditions of historic retreat and weakness for the workers movement, where opportunism is dominant, the composition of this alliance was inevitably dominated by parties that fail at the first hurdle when it comes to determining whether or not they represent the interests of the working class – do they oppose the current system of exploitation and the rule of capital?

It can be said quite unequivocally that Labour, Sinn Féin, the Greens and the Social Democrats do not reach this threshold. Those parties which supported Connolly due to her positions on neutrality and militarism, by virtue of the fact that they are willingly standing side-by-side with parties that oppose their fundamental goals, are tainted by association, especially among those workers who correctly identified the inherent flaws of the presidential system, even if it is voices from the reactionary right which they are listening to.

The result is that parties which present themselves as representing the working class, who should be independent and should put the interests of the working class above everything else, find themselves subordinated to the political line of the social democrats they have entered into alliance with. Their ability to stand as independent representatives of the working class is completely undermined by their so-called allies’ unrelenting support of the interests of their enemies – the capitalist class.

These parties’ legacies in government stand for themselves, Labour and the Greens have both taken part in coalitions with Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, as willing participants in austerity governments which have attacked the conditions of the working class. Sinn Féin, as the leading party in the Stormont legislature, has performed a similar role in the North, and has gone to great lengths to prove that it will not rock the boat when it inevitably comes to power in the South. While the Social Democrats can claim a clean slate, they certainly don’t represent any departure from the traditions of social democracy.

However, it would be a mistake to overemphasise the importance of this recent presidential campaign. The media circus that has grown up around the election in the last few months has given the impression – especially among certain young people – that the Presidency is a position of actual political importance and power. In truth, the position is a ceremonial one – the President can neither implement nor veto policy, they are incapable of deciding on the composition of a government or any appointments that come with it. Instead, for the tidy sum of €332,000 per year, they give the occasional speech, host receptions, and travel internationally on state visits – with the actual government safe in the knowledge that they are powerless to do anything.

While Connolly will undoubtedly be a thorn in the side of the Fianna Fáil / Fine Gael government, especially as they continue their campaign of militarisation, the danger of her campaign – especially for young people – is that it serves to further reinforce illusions as to the character of the Southern state, that a “left-wing” President would signal any tangible shift in the nature of Ireland’s politics away from the capitalist system.

As with most of the Irish political system, the election of the president is a fundamentally undemocratic process. While it does not reach the levels of election to the Seanad – at least suffrage for the presidency is universal – the requirement that candidates receive nominations from sitting TDs, or from county or city councils, means that nominations are really only open to those already embedded in the bourgeois political system. While there have been exceptions, the field is kept deliberately narrow to those deemed acceptable to the political establishment.

The enthusiastic backing of Connolly by almost all sections of the Left, left the field open to the reactionary right to capitalise on the correct criticism that the electoral system is undemocratic. The result of this can be seen in the unprecedented number of spoilt ballots which were returned. For communists, we have to constantly weigh up how to achieve reforms and small victories in the short-term, while also strengthening the position of the workers movement and not losing sight of the long-term goal of the complete social transformation of society. The support for the Connolly campaign does not seem like a step in the right direction.