The Greens aren’t the first Irish party to rotate ministerial posts

SO THIS is what the Green Party meant by innovation in government? A back-room deal to rotate ministries? Given that the party will likely be ‘rotated’ out of government by the electorate come a general election, it seems a strange idea to stop halfway through whatever work it is the party is doing and change, if not horses, at least the colours of the jockeys’ outfits.

Last week TV3 news reported that upon entering government with Fianna Fáil in 2007, senior Greens made a secret deal that John Gormley would resign as minister for the environment to be replaced by Dún Laoghaire TD Ciarán Cuffe.

Coming at the same time as a ministerial reshuffle the switch should not be a big deal, but it is.  As a longstanding party member Cuffe has a decent claim to a ministry and there are growing suspicions that the pact, like that between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, will not be honoured by incumbent minister and Green Party leader John Gormley. But such (potential) backstabbing, briefing and backbiting is not the problem. The problem is that the idea of rotating ministries strikes the electorate as juvenile, and for good reason: it is juvenile. The last time we heard of rotating ministries was when the DUP did the same thing in the Northern Assembly so that it could participate in government while also pretending not to.

Green senator Dan Boyle has justified the move in media interviews, saying it is a result of an ‘international’ Green principle designed to avoid corruption in office. Political correspondents guffawed at Boyle’s claim but, in fairness, it does sound like exactly the kind of bizarre and anti-political scheme the Greens would cook-up in the name of principles. The Green Party of England and Wales, for example, fought a long internal battle to elect a single leader in 2008. Prior to this it was party policy to have dual leaders called ‘male and female principle speaker’.

But considering rotating ministries as a matter of high principle unmasks a distate for the ‘dirty’ business of politics at the heart of the Green Party.

The Greens are frequently lambasted for having gone into government with Fianna Fáil in 2007 and, according to renegades such as Déirdre de Búrca and Patricia McKenna, attempting to hold-on to power at any cost. In fact, though, the Greens were right to go into government in 2007. Political parties exist to exercise power. The problem with the Greens isn’t that they wanted to go into power, it’s that Ireland’s electoral system handed them the opportunity to go into government without a clear mandate to do so.

It is no surprise that the party’s behaviour since assuming office has been contradictory. The manic extra-parliamentary internet chatter of Senator Dan Boyle in particular suggests a party that is chafing in government. Boyle’s shooting from the hip on social networking web site Twitter is at odds with the proper behaviour of a serious governing party getting on with the work of running the country. When a senior party figure says something, and despite being a mere Senator Boyle is a powerful figure within the Green Party, it should be an event.

It is all the more logical that the Greens should fall-apart-while-sticking-together given that a significant section of the party’s actual vote is anti-political in nature to begin with.

JASON WALSH is the editor of forth