Irish Coalition Government Unlikely, Chances For Another Election Loom Large - Experts

LONDON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 12th February, 2020) The possibility of some form of a coalition between Ireland's nationalist Sinn Fein with other left-leaning factions or with either Fianna Fail or Fine Gael parties is deemed unlikely, given the disagreements between the rival political forces, thus increasing chances for another election, experts told Sputnik.

The sudden surge in support for Sinn Fein during elections last weekend caught both politicians and media pundits off guard, with voters apparently seeing fit to punish the ruling party, Fine Gael, over long-running issues such as housing and health care. Sinn Fein has gone on to win 24.5 percent of the vote at the clear expense of Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, who came up short on roughly 22 and 21 percent, respectively.

Speaking to Sputnik on Tuesday, Hermann Kelly, the President of the eurosceptic Irish Freedom Party, argued the results made a second general election a possibility, although whether Sinn Fein would be able to maintain it's current popularity was not certain.

"I think it will be very hard [to form a coalition]. Fine Gael have made it clear they won't go into coalition with Sinn Fein. Fianna Fail have been floating the idea in the past day or so. There could be a hard-left coalition with Sinn Fein and People Before Profit etc, but it would be very difficult to agree a program for government. So it is possible that any coalition formed would be very unstable, so it could be heading back for a general election, that's true," he said.

Kelly also claimed that despite their apparent success, Sinn Fein was ill-suited to deliver on the wishes of voters, as ties to both Fianna Fail and Fine Gael effectively led them to having similar policies. Rather than being a force for effective change, he claimed, Sinn Fein stood for the same policies that had led to Ireland's "subservience" to the European Union, with their economic policies being likely to fail when it came to needed reform.

"I think people will find out that, as I call them 'the Irish troika,' in all major aspects of policy to do with membership and subservience to the European Union, social issues such as the promotion of abortion and so on and the destruction of the natural family ... mass immigration into Ireland and all the consequences of that ... on all those issues the Irish troika are all the same," he said.

People are obviously being seduced by the promise of a financial utopia where you can get free everything, Kelly noted.

"But in the real world people have to ask how this is all going to be financed and the reality is that it's people who have to get up and go to work in the morning that finance it. In terms of austerity they [Sinn Fein] can make all the promises they like but they just don't have the money to pay for it. It's economic bunkum," he said.

If doubts whether Sinn Fein can deliver even in the event of them being able to form a government still exist, observers are more united on the possibility that the previous two-party race between Fianna Fail and Fine Gael has been broken.

Speaking to Sputnik on Monday, Paul Murphy, as the re-elected Teachta Dala (TD, parliamentarian) for Dublin South West, argued that this outcome had shattered the "two-party duopoly" previously seen in Irish politics, claiming Sinn Fein had been able to capitalize on the kind of anti-establishment sentiment seen behind the rise of other left-leaning politicians such as Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn.

"I think they [Sinn Fein] have been the main recipient of the process that also driven the drive of Corbyn and Sanders - people are fed up with the political establishment, suffering from a horrendous housing and health crisis. They were looking for a radical alternative and Sinn Fein was the most obvious recipient of that move. The two party duopoly has been broken. That is an historic shift," Murphy said.

If the electoral dominance of both Fianna Fail and Fine Gael has ended, there remains some dispute as to what precisely will happen next. Whilst agreeing that a coalition government now seems unlikely and that fresh elections could be ahead, Eoin O'Malley, associate professor of political science at Dublin City University, believes Sinn Fein's popularity is down to long-running issues that otherwise have not been addressed, including economic factors left over from Ireland's financial crisis of 2008.

"This wasn't the result of a three-week campaign, this comes from ten years of breakdown as a result of the financial crisis," O'Malley said.

However, he believes the shift is more likely to be associated with Sinn Fein's populism rather than with any "left surge."

"Certainly voters moved to left parties, and Sinn Fein campaigns as a left wing party, but it's arguably a populist nationalist party more than anything else. This might have been a move away from establishment parties. Yesterday I would have said a coalition with Fianna Fail and Sinn Fein was likely, but the configuration makes that harder now.. We might be moving towards new elections. But that will take some time," O'Malley said.

Another surprise last weekend was just how limited a role Brexit played in the electorate's voting intentions. An Ipsos MRBI exit poll conducted partly on behalf of the Irish Times indicated that both homelessness and health care were major issues for the electorate, with 31 percent of respondents answering in the affirmative to the notion that "the country needs a radical change in direction."

Brexit came up as an issue of concern for just one percent of the five thousand respondents, a point that may partly explain the performance of Fine Gael, who had otherwise laid substantial emphasis on Prime Minister (Taoiseach) Leo Varadkar's ability to fight the EU's corner in negotiations with the United Kingdom.

"Brexit was important for people, but not as an election issue," O'Malley continued. "There was no partisan differences on the issue, so it wasn't going to be an election issue. In that context it was odd that the Taoiseach chose it as the mainstay of his campaign. Other issues, not least health and housing, were (more) important."

Now, Sinn Fein is believed to be attempting to capitalize on their success by reaching out to smaller, left-leaning parties such as the Greens in a bid to shape some form of a coalition. Sinn Fein currently occupies 37 out of 160 seats of the lower house of the Irish Parliament, a reality that makes the possibility of a functional cross-party government unlikely, even in the event of them bringing smaller factions on board.