Michael D Higgins is re-elected for a second term as President of the Republic of Ireland. After renominating for a second term\u00a0of seven\u00a0years\u00a0(which he originally intended not to do), he was supported by three political parties but Sinn Fein decided to field a candidate thus\u00a0triggering an election. In addition to\u00a0Liadh Ni Riada, Member of the European Parliament\u00a0representing Sinn Fein, there were four independent challengers, all supported by at least four Councils: a mental health advocate, Senator Joan Freeman,\u00a0and three businessmen from the Irish version of Shark Tank, one a highly ranked challenger from the 2012 election and one from Northern Ireland but who\u00a0had lived mostly in the USA.\u00a0There were six\u00a0debates, some on radio and some on\u00a0television,\u00a0but not all candidates (of the two women and four men)\u00a0participated in all of them; Higgins\u00a0spoke at three.\u00a0The incumbent\u00a0was criticised for his travel habits and expenses which may result in increased scrutiny of the salary and conditions for the job. Nearly all the candidates made promises to support certain causes or policies but these were mostly described as unfeasible or unconstitutional given the President’s role is largely ceremonial. Higgins is the first elected Irish president to face a re-election vote; Mary McAleese renominated unopposed in 2004 and served 14 years in the job. He won with 55.8 percent of first preference votes, over quota on the first count, from Peter Casey of Dragon’s Den\u00a0who adopted Trump-like slogans including criticisms of Travellers and those who are welfare dependent. There were 1,492,338 valid votes cast, 44 percent of eligible voters (3,401,681), total population 4.7m; voting is voluntary.\u00a0 At the same time, a referendum was held to remove the crime of blasphemy from the Constitution.\u00a0 This passed with 71 percent support. It is striking that this successful and engaging\u00a0direct election\u00a0for the\u00a0Head of State of a former British Dominion passed unnoticed in Australia, so our media\u00a0made a poor job of\u00a0that,\u00a0but\u00a0WfaAR notes\u00a0that the vote occurred during the\u00a0Sussex’s royal tour although on the actual day of the election, they were in Tonga.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Michael D Higgins is re-elected for a second term as President of the Republic of Ireland. After renominating for a second term\u00a0of seven\u00a0years\u00a0(which he originally intended not to do), he was supported by three political parties but Sinn Fein decided…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-14","wpcat-14-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1024"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1024\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1025,"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1024\/revisions\/1025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}