The will-they-won’t-they of the presidential race has finally received its answer; Bertie Ahern will not be on the ballot.
Despite spending the best part of the last two years saying that he was open to a presidential bid, Ahern told supporters on Thursday night that he was not seeking the Fianna Fáil nomination.
In a message to supporters, the former Taoiseach took some not-so-subtle jabs at Taoiseach Micheál Martin, “I suppose the only area where he has indicated in the past why he was anti-me was the Mahon Tribunal and the economy,” and made a veiled jab at Fianna Fáil’s supposed backing of former Dublin GAA manager Jim Gavin.
Referencing the likely Gavin candidacy, Ahern remarked, “when the leadership indicates so strongly, and personally gets involved for a candidate, it’s unlikely that the leader loses out on these things.”
The spectre of CMAT also appears to hang heavily over Ahern; the song Eurocountry, which directly references Ahern’s economic policies, resulting in a lost generation.
Ahern commented that there has been a narrative against him, which has “intensified, been pushed by a handful and reached a new generation. That’s not good.”
The optics of Fianna Fáil running Ahern were debated both within the party and externally.
Some in Fianna Fáil believed that owing to Fianna Fáil’s general election success last November, the party has been largely rehabilitated in the wake of the 2008 economic crash, but others within the party note that the party hasn’t won a Dáil seat in Ahern’s old consituency of Dublin Central since the 2007 general election, an indication that the public still hasn’t fully forgiven Ahern for his past transgressions.
Ahern was admitted back into Fianna Fáil in 2023, after resigning his membership in 2012 before the Mahon Tribunal findings were published.