Sir, - I listened with interest to Mr Eoghan Harris's attack on Mary McAleese on Thursday's RTE news. She was accused of being "not a Sinn Feiner but a me feiner", of being arrogant and of wanting the job of President only as a stepping stone in her own career. These are charges which may well be true but they are also charges which could be levelled at the previous holder of the office with some justification. Mr Harris, however, played no small role in Mrs. Robinson's presidential campaign. Ms McAleese's real crime, in Mr Harris's eyes, is that of being a `Northern nationalist". (He brings the same zeal to smelling out nationalists that Senator McCarthy did with communists.)
It seems that Mr Nally, in taking the advice of Mr Harris and his "oldest and closest friend", Mr Caden, has done his own campaign no good but has become the tool of people whose agenda is not his election but to run a spoiler campaign against Ms McAleese. He has acted wisely, if belatedly, in dropping Mr Caden from his team. - Yours etc.,
From John Hamill
Claremont Crescent, Dublin, 11.