Madam, - Could it be that President McAleese is flesh and blood after all? This is indeed a disturbing revelation, which has shook the nation to its very core.
Your editorial of January 31st describes Mrs McAleese as "voluble - even loquacious". These adjectives are indeed apt. You might also have added that invariably her comments are saccharine, clichéd and bland. It is small wonder that she generally confines herself to meaningless platitudes, as she has shown herself incapable of making a measured contribution on a sensitive and emotive issue such as the Holocaust. The President's Achilles heel may be her inability to discuss any topic without reference to Northern Ireland.
Your editorial concludes that "President McAleese has done more, in fact, to bridge the North-South divide with concrete contact than her illustrious predecessor". This statement is a massive generalisation which fails to take a number of factors into account, not least the changes that have occurred in the political climate. It was Mrs McAleese's "illustrious predecessor" who resigned from the Labour Party because she believed the Anglo-Irish Agreement failed to take account of unionist concerns. The controversy which greeted President Robinson's tentative handshake with Gerry Adams is difficult to fathom now. She was considered courageous even to cross the Border, given the security situation. Another important point is that President Robinson had a multi-theme Presidency. The "bridge-building" mantra of the present incumbent was hackneyed to begin with, but has been utterly undone by her recent remarks. The undemocratic genesis of her second term was breathtaking in its arrogance. If she really believed in the people's right to choose she could have forced an election by resigning from office. That simple reality cannot be refuted.
One senses that this is a watershed for the public perception of the McAleese presidency. Perhaps mindless sycophancy will be replaced with more detached analysis - surely a timely development in a democratic society. Recent events have shown that beneath the crowd-pleasing, syrupy facade may lurk that most feared of phenomena - the tribal time-bomb. - Yours, etc.,
MARK COEN, Tubber Road, Gort, Co Galway.
Madam, - The President was not wrong in what she said. She was wrong in the way that she said it. She was right to clarify her remarks, rather than withdraw them. She was right to apologise, although unnecessary offence was taken.
Many of the protests came from an organisation that debars Catholics from membership; the party of, perhaps, the greatest denunciator of Catholicism that this island has heard; and unionist politicians, generally, who give their allegiance as Head of State to a woman who cannot, by the laws of her country, be Catholic and cannot even have about her person the taint of being married to a Catholic. Perhaps the beams should be taken out of their own eyes before they start on the sty that is in the President's.
It is a pity that the President's message, that unchecked hatred can have horrific consequences, was lost in misplaced outrage. - Yours, etc.,
DARA HAYES, Ratoath, Co Meath.