The "Bertie" Model
    Le Monde | Editorial

    Monday 28 May 2007

    You don't change the captain of a winning team. That's the - at once wise and fair - political choice the Irish have made. By according the Fianna Fail party a clear electoral victory, they have offered its leader, the outgoing Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, the opportunity - unprecedented in its national history - to complete a third five-year mandate. They have renewed their trust in the man who incarnates the Emerald Isle, which in 15 years has become the richest country in Europe per inhabitant after Luxembourg.

    Fianna Fail largely owes this success, gained at the end of a highly personalized legislative campaign, to the qualities of the man everyone in Ireland calls "Bertie." A warm and direct man, a skillful strategist and indefatigable negotiator in permanent quest of consensus, this still young - he went into politics, still a kid, as a billposter - "real Dubliner," has known how to best deploy his talents in Dublin and elsewhere. Co-overseer for the peace process in Ulster since 1998, he formed a unified tandem with Tony Blair on this issue, which was finally rewarded several weeks ago with the installation in Belfast of a government shared between yesterday's sworn enemies, the Catholics of Sinn Fein and Protestants of the DUP. His good accord since then with the old Protestant pastor Ian Paisley surprises even the most blas . Voters wanted to thank the prime minister for his tenacity in the north, at the same time giving Sinn Fein - which dreams of participating simultaneousl y in the Dublin and Belfast governments - the cold shoulder.

    But the Irish credit their prime minister for glowing economic reports above all. Here it is, over a decade that the "Celtic Tiger" has been galloping at a speed surprising in Europe. Mr. Ahern has maintained or deepened the strategic choices that brought Ireland vigorous growth and full employment: openness to foreign capital (notably American), a tax system irresistibly attractive to investors, excellence in secondary education, budgetary effort in favor of research and, more recently, unreserved welcome to immigrants from central Europe. Today, Ireland is a high technology country that has endowed itself with a high value-added "knowledge economy."

    Former labor minister and an interlocutor acquainted with unions, Mr. Ahern has guaranteed the island's economic surge over the years by establishing a social partnership that constitutes the originality of the Irish model, especially compared to Great Britain where the state intervenes as little as possible in social relations. The majority of the Irish have more than gotten their share out of this subtle balance between prosperity and justice. In their eyes, Mr. Ahern is the one best-placed to preserve it.