Ireland Voters to Decide on New President and Old Anti-Blasphemy Law

DUBLIN — As an academic, poet, intellectual, committed socialist and famously pause-averse public speaker, Ireland’s president, Michael D. Higgins, is far from your typical crowd-pleasing candidate.

Yet as voting closed in Ireland’s presidential election last night he was expected to easily win a second term as Ireland’s head of state, taking as many as twice as many votes as the other five candidates combined.

Irish voters were also asked to decide whether to remove a constitutional clause banning blasphemy. Having recently approved far more divisive measures allowing same-sex marriage and abortion, they were expected to approve the proposal by a wide margin.

Although no one has ever been prosecuted for blasphemy in modern Ireland, rights groups like Amnesty International say the existence of the ban has been used by governments like those of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to argue in support of their own repressive regimes in various international forums.

In the lead-up to the vote, even the Catholic Church agreed that the clause was “largely obsolete.”

It might never have been an issue were it not for a 2015 TV appearance by British comedian Stephen Fry.

Asked about what he would say to God in the afterlife, Fry responded: “Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid God who creates a world so full of injustice and pain?”

That prompted both a police investigation that was ultimately dropped and a discussion about removing the clause from the constitution.

Although official results are not expected until Saturday, in opinion polls the blasphemy measure was supported by about half the voters while the 77-year-old president was the choice of between 68 and 69 percent of likely voters.

Although personally popular, Higgins also enjoys a huge advantage from his incumbent status.

The Irish presidency is largely a figurehead position, with seldom used constitutional powers to break parliamentary deadlocks and refer new laws for extra scrutiny. Once elected, an Irish president is therefore traditionally seen as above normal politics.

“Most presidents leave office on approval figures that governments could only dream of,” often in the realm of 90 percent, said Theresa Reidy, a political science lecturer at University College Cork.

Jane Suiter, a lecturer in communications at Dublin City University, said Higgins’ intellectualism appealed to many Irish voters who might not themselves share it.

“He allows us to project the best image of ourselves onto the world stage,” Suiter said. “We can have a poet and an intellectual as president and that makes us feel good about ourselves. And at the same time, he doesn’t have the power to raise our taxes. It’s consequence-free.

“I think younger people like the idea that he’s a bit anti-establishment,” she continued. “It’s the same reason why they like Jeremy Corbyn in the U.K. or Bernie Sanders in America — the sort of cool older person who speaks up for them and isn’t so concerned about the middle-aged people who politics is geared around.”

Higgins’ campaign was helped by the fact that no major national or public figure chose to run against him.

Sinn Fein, formerly the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, was the only major party that fielded a candidate, Liadh ni Riada, a daughter of the late composer Sean O Riada.

She was at 9 percent in the last poll, 3 points behind second-place Sean Gallagher, one of no less than three “investors” from the widely franchised TV reality show “Dragon’s Den” to run in this election.

In 2011 Gallagher came close to making the leap from reality show performer to head of state — five years before President Donald Trump — but lost out to Higgins.

Suiter said the number of reality show candidates was an obvious reflection of the success of Trump.

She was concerned at indications that voters with racist or far-right views might be attracted to one of them, Peter Casey, who caused controversy last week when he made what were widely perceived as pejorative remarks about Irish Travellers, a recognized ethnic minority.

Casey denied that he is racist.

“There are racists and xenophobes here just like anywhere else, but they’ve never had a political expression,” Suiter said. “If Casey were to pick up a lot of support after what he said it could encourage others to go down that road.”