Say what you like about him but Michael McDowell is never boring and evokes anything but apathy throughout the Irish electorate. Over the past few weeks I’ve listened to opinions as diverse as “McDowell is insane, a real whacko” & “McDowell is the only decent man in government”. Wherever your sympathies lie, the minister for justice can irk them. Should McDowell have leaked information to the press or made his allegations about Connolly using his Dail priviledges? For every yay, there’s a nay. Personally, I think it’s a difficult call. I’m not a fan of the CPI or what many regard as a provisional republican hypocrisy which looks for splinters in the eyes of others while ignoring their own planks (or baseball bats) but it’s inappropriate to categorise this as sedition in an open and democratic society. Even if you conceive that CPI’s purpose is to dig up dirt on parties other than SF to help win votes or discredit dissenters, it’s still a stretch to call this sedition. It’s my opinion that McDowell was angry with the noises coming from CPI and wanted to bring Connolly down. The precise reasons why the DPP failed to bring a case forward are classified but McDowell adopted a publish and be damned approach. Connolly is alledged to have incriminated himself through a fake passport application and McDowell much like that other Irish anti-hero Roy Keane “hit him hard”.
The allegations of “trial by media” against McDowell generally overlook two important points:
- McDowell isn’t stupid. This was a risky and brave thing to do. The effectiveness of the leaking the garda intelligence claimed by some commentators could have backfired spectacularly and cost him his job.
- McDowell himself was tried by the media for his actions and put under enormous pressure to resign. There were few supporters, his friend Sam Smyth among them.
A particularly insightful commenter on another blog comments that
“It is instructive that the one man, Frank Connolly (who has set himself up as an arbiter of public probity) who could deal an immediate hammer blow to McDowell’s political and quite possibly legal career (by demonstrating that he was not in Columbia at the time in question) has chosen not to do so, citing higher moral ground. This is a particularly weak response from a man dedicated to rooting out all that is wrong in public life.”
Bang on the money. Also, in response to another commenter, the involvement of Fergus Flood in the formerly well funded CPI does not automatically imply that senior members of the organisation don’t have strong provisional sympathies or these beliefs do not inform the operation of this organisation. Ultimately, this is moot as to my recollection it’s Connolly who garda intelligence implicates in a bogus passport application and not the CPI. McDowells party leader, Mary Harney, questioned the role and principles of the CPI in a television show after McDowells Dail statement on the matter.
For all the cat-calls and jeers, McDowell remains the most compelling figure in Irish politics. Many of his actions are defined by a refusal to forget the atrocities committed in the name of Irish Republicanism and a dedication to equitable justice for all. Forgiveness does not imply blind revisionism. In the words of philosopher George Santayana
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”