Through the Looking Glass

Yesterday I went back to the Mahon Tribunal for another round of Bertiemania with Simon and Louise. This time around, while it certainly wasn't the most exciting two hours of my life, it was still remarkable to me that Ireland's No. 1 was sitting in plain view not fifty yards away.

This session of Bertie's testimony had to do almost entirely with exchanging money from Irish pounds into either sterling or dollars. The implications are a little lost on me, whether he was dealing in dollars or sterling (he vehemently denies ever using the former), but this much was clear: there sat in the witness box a man trying to hide something. It was the only explanation for the amount of nothingness coming out of his mouth, all just sheer obfuscation. Ahern's lawyer was no better, frequently objecting that Ahern was not on trial any time his client was asked a question. It certainly must have been trying for prosecutor Des O'Neill, who whenever asking a new question, reiterated it six different ways, so that Ahern may know exactly what was being asked and so (in theory) could give a straightforward answer (which he never did).

Ahern's credibility is withering, and everyone knows it. But there is no drama in this "scandal". It's nowhere near "sexy" enough; frankly, it's boring. As a result, no one is demanding Bertie's head on a platter, and the man himself is so entrenched that he's only leaving when he wants to.

How he still masses so much support from the Irish public, despite the gawkish transparency of his game, is what baffles me. To me, he represents the worst kind of politician: the 19th-century Teapot Dome political machine kind, totally uninterested in improving or even changing anything with the powers of his office. Ahern sees his position as a way to help out his buddies, make a little cash on the side, and satisfy his own dreams of importance. He's not a tyrant, so he's not easily identifiable as malicious; given a cursory glance, at the worst he seems incompetent. Yet Ahern knows exactly what he's doing, even if he's laughably poor at hiding it. The charm just doesn't reach me, a charm that seems at odds with the very nature of a culture that has little use for pretense.

Or maybe the public has just passively accepted that he's a crook, but a rather benign one, as long as he's just serving himself. It's a conclusion that dismisses a lot, but as Kevin Rafter of the Sunday Tribune said last Sunday:

...the public may simply be weary of revelations about another senior politician with unexplainable financial affairs. After over a decade of tribunal investigations the public have come to expect little better from their political leaders. Ahern's evasiveness is probably hurting the perception of politics more than it is damaging his own reputation.

On Ahern's future, he continues:

There will be no move against Ahern in the short term. The negative mutterings in the parliamentary party for now remain private. [...] But the longer the tribunal appearances go on the more Ahern will become a nuisance if not a liability for Fianna Fáil politicians who have to fight the next general election.

It's much harder to argue for the preservation of political faith than it is to cry out for blood. The latter is premature, so the former prevails, and everyone goes home happy: Fianna Fáil gets to keep their "embattled" leader, and the opposition gets to claim it objected all along to these shenanigans.