A letter from Doug Baker in Northern Ireland
September 28, 2011
Irish Presidential Race and the Queen’s Visit to the Republic
On the 27th of October the Republic of Ireland will elect a new president. The head of the government in the Republic is the Taoiseach (prime minister), who is the leader of the party with the most members of the Dáil (parliament). The role of the Irish president is largely ceremonial; nevertheless, it is an important position and the way in which an incumbent makes use of the office can make a significant impact in wider society. Therefore election campaigns for the role are robust and, at times, combative.
Doug Baker introducing a young guest to President Mary McAleese at the dedication of new accommodation at Corrymeela.
Current president Mary McAleese, the first Irish president to have been born in Northern Ireland, is stepping down after the maximum 14 years in the post. There are seven contenders to succeed her. Each has been nominated either by at least 20 members of the Dáil or by at least 4 county councils. They are Senator David Norris, an academic associated with Trinity College Dublin and a gay rights campaigner; former pop star Dana Rosemary Scallon, who is now known more for promoting conservative Catholic values; Labour's candidate Michael D. Higgins; Fine Gael's candidate Gay Mitchell; independents Sean Gallagher and Mary Davis; and Martin McGuinness, Sinn Fein’s candidate and up until the campaign began the deputy First Minister of the Northern Ireland Assembly. (SF MLA John O’Dowd has been appointed Northern Ireland deputy First Minister temporarily, while Martin McGuinness is involved in campaigning.)
Mr. McGuinness's entry into the race has been controversial with debate surrounding his past as a senior figure in the Provisional IRA. Several high-ranking politicians in the Republic, including ministers in the current government, have stated publicly that they do not believe it would be appropriate for him to be elected and represent the state publicly.
Mr. Norris’s candidacy has also sparked controversy as he had previously withdrawn because of concerns surrounding a letter he wrote to an Israeli court pleading for clemency for his former partner, who had been convicted of serious sexual offences against an underage boy.
Mr. Higgins, considered one of the front-runners, is a former Labour minister while his Fine Gael opponent, Mr. Mitchell, currently serves in the European Parliament.
Sean Gallagher is a successful businessman who previously served as an advisor to the opposition Fianna Fail party. Mary Davis came to prominence as the organiser of the Special Olympics in Ireland in 2003.
The next few weeks will be more than just an interesting period to observe the candidates and public reaction to them. The outcome does matter.
Both the outgoing president, Mary McAleese, and her husband, Martin, have dedicated her 14 years in office to promote improved relations between people in the Republic and Northern Ireland, between different factions within Northern Ireland, and between the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom. Martin has been credited with much behind-the-scenes work with Loyalists in Northern Ireland, which has helped to increase trust and understanding. All kinds of individuals and groups have been welcomed into their official residence in Dublin who never would have expected the invitation, including Orangemen, women’s groups from low-income Loyalist areas of Belfast, victims of the Troubles, and numerous cross-community and interchurch groups from towns across the north. Likewise, she has made many visits to grassroots peace and reconciliation projects in all parts of Ireland and given great encouragement to those involved in them.
In so doing she has been continuing what she was about before she was elected president. A deeply committed Christian, she was co-chair of the Irish Inter-Church Working Party, which produced the first major discussion document on sectarianism. On the back of that there were several occasions when I was privileged to work with Mary. Years ago she was a keynote speaker at one of the Summerfest weeks I coordinated at Corrymeela and on several occasions she and I worked with day conferences for local interchurch groups seeking to identify practical ways they could begin to address the challenges of sectarianism.
The epitome of all of this relationship-building and her efforts to contribute to the healing of past divisions was perhaps most publicly seen in the official state visit of Queen Elizabeth II, head of state of the United Kingdom, earlier this year. President McAleese, along with others, had spent years paving the way for such a visit—the first by a British monarch since the 1916 uprising and War of Independence eventually led to the end of centuries of British rule in Ireland and the creation of an independent Republic outside the British Commonwealth.
The historic four-day visit was filled with deeply poignant symbolic gestures. The president and the queen made joint visits to lay wreaths at memorials for those killed in the fight for Irish independence and for those thousands from Ireland who served and died in the British Army in World Wars I and II, where both national anthems were played. The queen also visited Croke Park, the home of Gaelic athletics and the scene of a rampage by British troops in 1920. In apparent retaliation for an IRA ambush of British soldiers elsewhere, the troops opened fire and killed some 20 players and spectators. (See the March 2007 update under the archived letters on our PC(USA) Mission Connections webpage.)
In carefully crafted speeches at a state banquet both the president and the queen spoke of difficult centuries in the relationship between the two countries and while agreeing that you cannot change the past declared each in her own way that they personally and their governments have chosen to change the future.
The queen began her speech in Irish, to which the president gave an audible “Wow!” as if to underscore for other citizens of Ireland the importance of the queen’s gesture. The queen included in her remarks an assertion that the two countries are more than neighbors and specifically referred to them meeting as “equal partners.” And, while there were no apologies made, there was clear acknowledgment of pain caused by each country on the other in "the complexity of our history." The queen specifically acknowledged that this history includes things she wished had been done differently or not at all.
Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams called the visit premature; no Sinn Fein figures accepted invitations to any of the events, and there were some street protests. However, while not all figures in Irish politics nor all ordinary Irish people welcomed the visit, by the fourth day crowds in Cork were jubilantly greeting the queen’s motorcade and most commentators spoke of this being a huge step toward healing between two nations with a long troubled history. Many referred to it as a visible culmination of the peace process. Clearly it was the culmination of years of careful, very intentional bridge-building on the part of President Mary McAleese, who grew up in Ardoyne in North Belfast and experienced firsthand as a child the consequences of sectarian clashes between neighbors.
Salters Sterling, one of the trustees of the Irish School of Ecumenics, said of the visit: “The presence of the president and the queen together, so visibly relaxed and comfortably serene in each other’s company, confirms the nuances about nationality as provided for in the Belfast Agreement of 1998. We can be British, we can be Irish, and we can be both. There is no superiority or inferiority of citizenship or subjecthood in either part of Ireland. That both heads of state found the words in the present to deal with the past for the sake of the future in their speeches at the state banquet confirmed that we have moved irrevocably into a world of new beginnings.”
We wait to see who wins the race for the Irish presidency, how they build upon their predecessor’s efforts, and whether they might take us further into a world of new beginnings.
Doug Baker
The 2011 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 196
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