by Alan Jacques
THE Fine Gael/Fianna Fail coalition on Limerick City and County Council will be a forerunner for a formal alliance between the two parties after the next election.
That’s the view of Sinn Féin council leader Maurice Quinlivan who has pointed to a range of opinion polls showing that the combined strength of both parties is now well below 50 percent of the electorate, the latest being an Irish Times MRBI poll showing combined strength of just 40 per cent.
The Limerick City North councillor also predicts that both Fine Gael and Fianna Fail, who he refers to as “the chief architects of six long years of austerity”, are in deep trouble.
“Both parties have been happy to coalesce here in Limerick and in a number of other councils throughout the country. To be fair, such alliances make sense – after all there are no policy differences between the two conservative parties. There is a growing realisation that Fianna Fail are essentially Fine Gael Light in all but name,” he claimed.
He believes that all of these electoral shifts are leading inexorably to a formal left–right divide at both local and State level.
“It’s already quite clear that if the numbers stack up after the next election, Fine Gael and Fianna Fail will do a deal, just as they have done here in Limerick.
“Voters are increasingly aware that the parties are virtually identical. This is why people are moving to Sinn Fein, and other parties of the left. It’s only been 90 years coming but we may finally be moving beyond civil war politics here in the South,” he concluded.
