BERTIE Ahern quit as the Irish Republic’s Taioseach and Fianna Fail leader on May 6th. Political Journalist JOHN COULTER analyses how he will be remembered by Northern nationalists and unionists.
BERTIE-A-WHO? That will never be said by northern unionists and republicans as the two sides will have a range of memories of the outgoing Taioseach and Fianna Fail leader Bertie Ahern.
Here’s the Top 20 names Bertie Ahern will be known by:
1, Bertie A-Stern: In spite of the personal loss of his beloved mother to whom he was exceptionally close during the final days of the negotiations which produced the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, he put his personal grief aside.
He kept a stern political course, steering all parties to sign the Belfast Agreement on April 10.
2, Bertie A-Hem: In the Republic among his own voters, he was known as the Teflon Taioseach because of his slick dress sense. He was always immaculately dressed, especially for public occasions at which he was representing the Republic in the North.
3, Boyne Bertie: He gave the green light to millions of Dail cash for the exclusively Protestant Orange Order in the Irish border counties.
He encouraged Orangemen to think of their past as a tourist tradition rather than sectarian triumphalism.
He was photographed at the Boyne site with DUP boss Ian Paisley, developed the Boyne region as a major visitor attraction, and urged Unionists to see the Republic as a place to develop their culture with annual parades, such as Donegal’s Rossnowlagh and the Order’s Williamite Trail in the South.
4, Bertie’s Bunker: He used the Belfast and St Andrews Agreements to increase Southern influence on Northern affairs by building a plush multi-million pound base for Dail civil servants and politicians to meet in the leafy, upmarket area of Malone in south Belfast.
5, Bertie the Bridge: He persuaded the election-battered SDLP that the best way to win back moderate Catholic middle class voters from Sinn Fein was to agree a merger with one of the Southern parties, preferably his own Fianna Fail.
He wanted Northern nationalists to be structurally part of a 32-county party rather than just tactically talk about an all-Ireland republic.
Ahern’s legacy will be for Unionists in the long-term to fear the emergence of Fianna Fail/SDLP in the North.
6, Border Bertie: He persuaded both Sinn Fein and the DUP to embrace the cross-border bodies, and got the Paisley and McGuinness camps participating in them in a fashion he could never achieve with the Ulster Unionists’ David Trimble and the SDLP’s Seamus Mallon.
7, Bertie A-Sunder: He brought the seemingly unstoppable Sinn Fein electoral bandwagon to a screaming halt in the South’s May 2007 Dail election when many pundits had predicted Ahern would have to consider a government coalition with the Provos’ political wing.
He gave moderate nationalists and Unionists hope Sinn Fein’s poll strategy could be blown asunder.
8, Bertie the Bouncer: There were no leadership coups during his watch, unlike Trimble who faced constant leadership crises from the anti-Agreement wing in the UUP, and Paisley senior, who was eventually forced to quit as Free Presbyterian Church moderator, DUP boss and First Minister.
Ahern’s personal discipline within Fiann Fail ranks helped mould his iconic status in the North in how to run a political party.
9, Bearhug Bertie: He always greeted high powered political dignatories with an ethusiastic handshake. He’ll be remembered most for not shirking away from Paisley senior’s slap on the shoulder in Dublin, and even going to Big Ian’s staunch Unionist turf of North Antrim.
10, Bertie A-Turn: His biggest achievements were to persuade the hardline Paisley-led DUP to embrace power-sharing and enter a Stormont Executive with Sinn Fein, and to equally convince republicans that violence would never bring about a place in Northern government.
11, Bertie A-Burn: He worked tirelessly to ensure the Provos kept their word to decommission their arsenals and not return to violence when they had to make hard concessions in the peace process.
12, Bertie A-Churn: He became a champion of the Northern farmers and developed a cross-border agricultural strategy for the island which helped combat the tough European Union quotas on milk, as well as largely protect Ireland, north and south, from the ravages of BSE, Foot and Mouth, bird flu and Blue Tongue.
13, Bertie Banks: To prop up the peace process, he unveiled massive investment in the North – especially from the US. During his watch as Taioseach, millions of pounds have poured into the Stormont Executive’s coffers.
14, Bertie A-Learn: He forced the Northern establishment to face the realities of the dreaded 11-Plus exam and work to find a workable replacement.
Although there is a major row at present between current Northern schools boss Caitriona Ruane of Sinn Fein and the state schools over selection, Ahern has at least been able to get the debate rolling.
15, Bertie A-Gearn: He has kept his public cool image in spite of years of listening to Unionist whinging and republican moaning.
16, Bertie A-Journ: One of his biggest flops was preventing the suspension of Stormont during the alleged republican spy ring scandal.
During the early years of devolution at the turn of the new millennium, he was constantly having to avoid the potholes of unionists or nationalists wanting to adjourn power-sharing because of not getting their ways.
17, Flirty Bertie: His private life was a constant attraction to the gossip columnists. With not having the strains of Tasioseach and Fianna Fail boss to bear, the question will be – who could the new women in his life become following the previous break-up with his long-term partner?
18, Bertie the Brit: He became a hate figure among dissident republicans who saw him as selling out their concept of a 32-county Ireland.
Ahern also introduced draconian anti-terror laws following the Real IRA’s Omagh bomb massacre in 1998.
Unionists view him by this title because of his ability to scrap Articles Two and Three, which were the Republic’s territorial claim to the North.
19, Bertie A-Yearn: While he is leaving on a political high, there are some goals he has not achieved in the North – bringing about an all-Ireland republic, stopping the successful Chuckle Brothers image from undermining Paisley, solving the Northern parades disputes, stamping out sectarianism and racism.
20, Biffo’s Buddy: Ahern ably showed the policy of the bloodless coup in getting Brian ‘Biffo’ Cowen elected as his successor.
This compared to the public battles which pushed Trimble from the UUP, or the internal rankerings which shoved out Paisley senior.
Ahern’s leaving has also focussed Northern attention on which leader is next for the chop – could it be Gerry Adams in Sinn Fein, Mark Durkan at the moderate nationalist SDLP, or David Ford in the centrist Alliance Party?