January 30 2007 / PD Leader Has Chosen
It's been months since I last posted, thanks to life in general, college and then the dreaded college exams getting in the way of the weblog and political life has moved on from the Bertie Ahern payments controversy. At the time of my last post, I wrote that Michael McDowell had to carefully choose his next step as regards to how he was going to handle the Bertie Ahern payments controversy.
It's now four months further on, into an election year and as we know, McDowell made the choice to support Bertie Ahern, after some deliberation. In the 2002 election, McDowell made a fuss out of climbing a lamp-post in his constituency, with his eye catching poster which read "Single party government? No thanks". In my post September, I wondered how the public would react to the PD's supporting Fianna Fáíl when the larger partywas facing into their biggest crisis of their second term in Government, after they - the now PD leader in particular - making their point that a single party government was something undesirable, and the nation would be better off with the PD's watching Fianna Fáil. Amazingly enough, the Government parties experienced a surge in the polls, when they should have taken a hit on account of the facts of the issue of the payments.
So it looks like the PD leader chose well, and has put the alternative coalition of Fine Gael and Labour behind in the polls, which they currently seem to be struggling to deal with. It remains to be seen as to how it will all play out. There is probably four months to go in this election, and it's not over yet.
I hope to be able to cover some of the events over the coming months on this weblog, if college doesn't get in the way! Happy New Year!