ALL is quiet on the jungle floor down in Merchants Quay for the moment. All the fuss from councillors over the Mayor going off on his jollies without them has subdued, until they invariably need a stick to smack him with again.
Their attention turned to the presidential election and canvassing for the three-legged dog show on October 24. Fine Gael and Fianna Fail councillors played that one as smart as Shane Lowry at the recent full meeting of the local authority.
Maria Steen is still dancing around her €40,000 handbag after the dismal display of affection shown to her by our local lot as consideration was given to her presidential nomination.
But she needn’t have gotten her proverbials in a twist, as Cork councillor Kieran McCarthy and Limerick boys Dr Donnacha MacGabhann and Gerben Uunk didn’t get a look in either, witht the Council choosing not to choose at the end of it all. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael ranks had the barricades up double-fast and there was more chance of Mayor Moran getting the nod for the presidency from this tricky rabble.
The bid to get names on the ballot paper proved a web of head-wrecking intrigue with long drawn-out intervals and more tension than on the 18th hole at Bethpage Black. Thankfully, Green Party councillor Sean Hartigan, king of the teenage disco slow set in his day, was on-hand to relieve some of the pressure.
“I had an email earlier on today saying the candidates that came before Limerick City and County Council lacked the skillset and gravitas to be considered for the role of the president. When I got back to this person, they didn’t even know the names of the candidates that presented before us here,” Cllr Hartigan revealed.
The cat was out of the bag now, and Hartigan had his boogie on with it.
“A number of very capable candidates came in here and gave their time to speak to the Council and to travel and to say their piece. A number were qualified, if not more qualified than some of the candidates that have secured a place on the ballot sheet, and I believe this Council should acknowledge the effort they made. We have power and I believe we should use that power,” he said.
As we all know now, the FG and FF majority chose to use their power by maintaining the status quo. You probably couldn’t teach Jack Nicklaus any new tricks at this stage, I imagine, as well.
Politics, you see, just like golf, is as Arnold Palmer once put it, “deceptively simple and endlessly complicated”.
– Local Democracy Reporting Scheme
