New Irish President Catherine Connolly

[Daysgo]

Congratulations to Catherine Connolly, new Irish President . Won by her interviews, by her honesty, by her defending her views, by her outright calmness in answering questions. I think she'll be the best President we've ever had

She definitely won’t - she thinks there are hundreds of genders, and is perfectly happy to utterly shaft women.

Mná na hÉireann don’t even exist any more thanks to her ilk, and she is too busy sucking up to idiots to realise what she is saying.

Meghan Murphy said this is an issue whereby you can judge a politicians intellect and integrity. She falls massively short for me.

I like her personality a lot but I’m not sure I align with her politics. I’m hoping she will moderate as president. Any thing to far to the left or to the right these days I find a complete turn off. She is full on TWAW and very leftist on trans issues more generally for example and I am GC. Not that that will be an issue in Ireland for a long time into the future where we prefer to pretend and carpet sweep issues rather than engage in uncomfortable conversation.

Was a v entertaining election, like most Irish elections tbh. She is one of those people though who comes across as being totally honest every time she speaks, you cannot buy that.

So we ended up with a two candidate competition, was three, one dropped out over debt he never paid back to renter of his second property who paid him too much by accident. Tho dropped out late so stayed on ballot paper. There was a big spoil your vote campaign, my own constituency had highest percentage of spoiled votes 20%!

Lot of anger against government re immigration, health system, housing and blocking candidates from other parties getting on ballot. ( This turned out to be a really stupid tactic as deprived the two govt parties of possible transfers) . Yes we have proportional representation.. you number your candidates from 1 to as far as u want to go.

Catherine Connolly though, (anyone interested should look at her interviews, honest, decent, polite, calm etc). I know a lot of people who'd normally never vote for a v leftist candidate but she persuaded people to vote for her essentially by who she was...

Her speech last night was re being a President for all, ie not just those who voted for her. She'll be a great President, no doubt.

We should have a very angry electorate. We have an extremely closed election system for presidency so we rely on our politicians to select candidates on our behalf. They screwed it up absolutely royally. Both of the main political parties gave us appalling candidates and SF could not come up with one of their own. They were catastrophically poor, the only one good thing was the system kept some right gobshites out of the running.

She persuaded people to vote for her because she isn’t in government. Heather Humpteys never had a chance because people are absolutely furious with how the country is being run.
Many people I spoke to were angry at the FF/FG antics which essentially blocked off alternative candidates from getting on the ballot. It’s up to the electorate to decide who is worthy of voting for president not Martin and Harris. So as a result we saw lots of people spilling their vote, others voting for Gavin and then other voted for Connolly as a way of keeping Humpfries out. Obviously there are very very left voters who feel she is the best candidate and are happy. Rest of us are glad the president has no real power so shr can’t do too much damage.
For me any politician spouting TWAW either lacks integrity or intellect.

You should watch her speaking tbh

Load of crap tbf, we have same system we've always had for getting on presidential ballot. A lot of candidates, I feel v deliberately, left it too late to start campaign and are now shouting unfair, and trying to look like establishment was afraid of them etc.. Absolute joke !

A good take on what happened @Crunchingleaf

I’m sorry but she sounds like a lunatic.

well done, Ireland. You’ve got the leader you rightly deserve.

It is nigh on impossible to run a campaign without shed loads of money behind you. Our political funding system is massively locked down so that is a significant impediment to declaring as a candidate for most people.

Can she refuse to sign legislation into law, (room for shenanigans there), or must that be through the Council of State only? I am not sure CC is going to keep her mouth shut, especially since she employed a member of Eirigi (gun runners) and Sinn Fein had her back.

But if her only power is re legislation, that could be dangerous also if she is influenced by the above. Time will tell.

I listened to her in long form on The Blind Boy Podcast and understand what you are saying.

And then she goes and spoils it all by pretending she believes something she knows to be a lie. Fundamentally she is as bad as the rest of them.

She is a barrister and I think from what I have seen from her she has significant integrity and in that respect she will have upmost respect for the constitution. I suspect at most she will refer to the council of state but I cannot see her being far off Michael D in that regard and even that will be few and far between.