[Constitutional Convention][1][26 Jan 2013] Reducing the Presidential term of office

RangeR

Greetings. My name is Keith Burke. I'm from Kildare. I was chosen to be one of the 66 citizens of Ireland to represent the wider citizen base in the Constitutional Convention. Some broad information can be found here. It looks mostly accurate

I'm not an expert in law, the constitution or politics. I want to educate myself in the various proposals to better allow myself discuss it on the day. I also want to hear what the wider citizen base think about the proposals.

If you like this sort of stuff, maybe you would like to vote for my forum request so we can discuss a wider range of Convention issues?

The Convention are meeting on January 26th and 27th 2013 to discuss the first issue put to us.

Reducing the Presidential term of office to five years and aligning it with the local and European elections

The Irish Constitution [PDF] currently states

Article 12.3.1 - Page 16 wrote:

The President shall hold office for seven years from the date upon which he enters upon his office, unless before the expiration of that period he dies, or resigns, or is removed from office, or becomes permanently incapacitated, such incapacity being established to the satisfaction of the Supreme Court consisting of not less than five judges

Request : This thread is not to discuss the Convention itself, please only discuss the pro's and con's of the thread topic.


I welcome your comments. Discuss.

Sponge Bob

I agree.

1. The 7 year presidency is too long. Historically a lot of elderly gents got it and De valera was blind and doddering by the time he left the Árus. (That description is from Memory by the way not second or third hand) 5 years is safer.

2. It is cheaper to synchronise with local and EU elections than running a separate election and it helps maximise voter turnout on the day. By elections should only fill the post ( if required) until the next local elections are called.

3. Term limits, currently 14 year and 2 terms. I would allow 15 years and 3 terms.

4. Franchise. I would allow all Irish Citizens ((by birth) OR (by acquisition AND continuiing ordinary residence), North and South , to vote. I would also allow all resident EU citizens inthe STATE ONLY to vote. Postal voting if required for citizens and ballot boxes in full embassies with resident ambassadors ( London / Washington etc ) , or full ( not honorary consuls) and postal votes by application from anywhere on the planet.

Synchronising with the EU elections means we have a voting register which is different to National elections where only UK and Irish citizens may vote. EU citizens may already vote in European elections.

Registration of postal votes to be completed 3 months before the election seeing as the intervals are fully predictable.

I would not extend the franchise to children/grandchildren of citizens not born here ...ie passport holders.

Best of luck and HTH

Iwasfrozen

First of all I'd like to thank you for the wonderful idea of taking people's considerations into this RangeR.

1. I disagree that the President's term of office should be reduced to five years. It is the President who permits the Dail to dissolve and oversees it's reformation. But if we shorten his or her term to tie with the Dail then there is no way he or she can perform that function.

2. I agree that all Irish citizens living abroad (including those in the North) should be allowed to vote.

jank

Thanks for taking the time to hear some opinions.

1. I would like to see a reduction of the term of office for the presidency. 7 years is much much too long. 4-5 would be adapt.

2. Irish citizens abroad should have a say in who the head of state is. After all the president represents all Irish people at home and abroad, the vote should therefore extend to those living away from home.

Victor

I think 7 years is too long a term, I suspect it is only matched by France and exceeded by dictatorships and monarchies. Two terms should be sufficient for anyone - the job is staid enough as it is.

I'm not happy that the president can draw a full pension immediately on completion of their term, regardless of age. That said, I wouldn't like to imagine a former president falling on hard times.

The president's salary could be linked to that of the Taoiseach.

While certain presidential actions are on advice of the government, I think these should be reduced in some cases, giving the president slightly more leeway, e.g. "13 1 2° The President shall, on the nomination of the Taoiseach with the previous approval of Dáil Éireann, appoint the other members of the Government." - should the president be able to reject a candidate minister?

Or "7 1° The President may, after consultation with the Council of State, communicate with the Houses of the Oireachtas by message or address on any matter of national or public importance." - surely the president should merely have to give notice he is to communicate with the Oireachtas, not be dependent on consultation or permission (see 13 9).

I would be careful of giving every citizen (I don't think there is a distinction between a citizen and a mere passport holder, surely all passport holders are citizens) the vote in presidential elections - there are something like 7 million Irish passport holders, but only 3 million adults of voting age in Ireland. Irish and British residents in Ireland already can vote for president.

Where only one candidate is nominated for the office of President, there should be a referendum on accepting this person or not.

Is it necessary for the presidential oath to say "In the presence of Almighty God ... May God direct and sustain me."

Jimoslimos

Sponge Bob wrote: »

2. It is cheaper to synchronise with local and EU elections than running a separate election and it helps maximise voter turnout on the day. By elections should only fill the post ( if required) until the next local elections are called.

The problem with synchronising with European elections is what happens in the (not too unlikely) event that the President dies before end of term.

Peregrinus

I'd be concerned that synchonising with the European and/or local elections might tend to make presidential elections more partisan (as in, party affiliation would affect the outcome to a greater extent that it does at present). I don't think this would be good. I also share Jimoslimos's concern about what would happen if the president died or resigned; would a successor be elected just for the balance of the term, in order to keep the elections in phase?

I don't think seven years is too long; it's not as though the President implements policy which the people may wish to review or reconsider; he's elected on the basis of perceived experience, character and judgment, and those are not perceptions which are likely to change rapidly in the way that support for policies may change.

efb

I don't think 7 years is too long- a president should outlast a government

Condatis

There is a practical difficulty with synchronising the Presidential term with local elections.

Should a President die or resign during the term of office there would be a vacancy and an election would be necessary. The new five year term would not then be in sync with the date for the next local elections.

President Erskine Childers died in office and President Mary Robinson resigned without completing her first term. President O'Dhalaigh also resigned during his term of office. In each case an unscheduled election was necessary.

The suggestion that where there is only one candidate for the Presidency that that name should be submitted to the people is a good one. This would ensure that the office remains the gift of the people and would never again be bestowed at the behest of the political parties.

Jimoslimos

Condatis wrote: »

The suggestion that where there is only one candidate for the Presidency that that name should be submitted to the people is a good one. This would ensure that the office remains the gift of the people and would never again be bestowed at the behest of the political parties.

I agree, however unless the incumbent was very very unpopular the turnout would be extremely low. I'd imagine negativity bias may skew results also.

Peregrinus

The problem with submitting a sole candidate to a plebiscite is, what if that candidate is rejected? Does the incumbent have to remain in office until someone willing to serve, and capable of approval by the people, is found? And what makes us thinks somebody would be found? If they weren't willing to stand the first time around, why would they be willing to stand the second time? And who would be interetsted in funding a campaign to inform the public about them and secure the public's approval?

I don't think this proposal is well thought through. The public would be asked to approve someone who hadn't sought the office, and who would have no interest in spending large amounts of money and time informing the public about why they should approve him anyway. If there isn't sufficient interest in the office to have a contested election, I don't think you can somehow manufacture that interest by forcing people to vote when they aren't actually being offered an alternative, and nobody is interested in running a campaign.

I0 think a better proposal to avoid uncontested elections - if there's a need for that at all - would be to lower the bar for nominations.

Condatis

Peregrinus wrote: »

I0 think a better proposal to avoid uncontested elections - if there's a need for that at all - would be to lower the bar for nominations.

I'd agree with that.

Victor

Peregrinus wrote: »

I0 think a better proposal to avoid uncontested elections - if there's a need for that at all - would be to lower the bar for nominations.

Possibly.

There was a problem where the likes of Hillary was seen to not have a democratic mandate.

Peregrinus

Victor wrote: »

Possibly.

There was a problem where the likes of Hillary was seen to not have a democratic mandate.

What was the problem, exactly?

And what makes you think it would have been solved if people had been offered a plebiscite in which there was no alternative to Hillery? It sounds a bit North Korean, to be honest. I don't see how approval in such a plebiscite could possibly amount to a "democratic mandate".

View

A better question to ask might be why we need direct elections for the Presidency at all. The powers of the President are fairly minor even in comparasion to other countries that use a "weak Presidential" system as such the contests are the political equivalent of a beauty contest - utterly vacuous and largely irrelevant who wins given the severe constitutional constraints on the role.

seamus

Seven years is probably about right. The last campaign was a shambles with 2, maybe 3 credible candidates and a lot of noise and furore caused by fringe groups, and the one before that went uncontested.

It would seem to me that reducing the term to five years would mean a succession of poor candidates and uncontested elections. At least the two extra years may mean that we build up a pool of credible candidates for each election.

I'd maybe be into increasing it to a single ten-year term.

stevenmu

Considering the role of the President is largely ceremonial I don't personally think there's anything wrong with a 7 year term. If the President was to play a more active role in running the country, then I think a shorter term would be needed.

I do think the President should take a much more active role if the Seanad is to be abolished or dimished, but that's starting to go into another topic.

Victor

seamus wrote: »

I'd maybe be into increasing it to a single ten-year term.

That would be difficult to deal with if you ended up with a crank who referred every bill to the Supreme Court.

Amirani

I think that 7 years seems like a fair balance for a presidential term.

Is it worth visiting the criteria for nomination? Certain criteria seem quite outdated and create a situation where we have uncontested elections or else some popular candidates may not be nominated (as was nearly the case with Norris in the last election).

hmmm

As stevenmu says, because it's a largely ceremonial role I don't see the point of shortening the term of office. If anything, having more frequent elections will see the office overly politicised.

The office shouldn't be about offering senior politicians their chance at being President. The only change I'd like to see made is the salary reduced to 100k, there will still be a queue of qualified candidates.

Kinski

Seven years seems ok to me, but I would like to see changes of some sort in the nominations process, particularly given we've seen examples of unchallenged Presidents gaining a second term without an election; 14 years on the back of one election is too long.

Thomas_I

RangeR wrote: »

Greetings. My name is Keith Burke. I'm from Kildare. I was chosen to be one of the 66 citizens of Ireland to represent the wider citizen base in the Constitutional Convention. Some broad information can be found here. It looks mostly accurate

I'm not an expert in law, the constitution or politics. I want to educate myself in the various proposals to better allow myself discuss it on the day. I also want to hear what the wider citizen base think about the proposals.

If you like this sort of stuff, maybe you would like to vote for my forum request so we can discuss a wider range of Convention issues?

The Convention are meeting on January 26th and 27th 2013 to discuss the first issue put to us.

Reducing the Presidential term of office to five years and aligning it with the local and European elections

The Irish Constitution [PDF] currently states



Request : This thread is not to discuss the Convention itself, please only discuss the pro's and con's of the thread topic.


I welcome your comments. Discuss.

This doesn´t has anything to do with the way the last election went, has it?:)

Seven years is a long time of a Presidential term, but to reduce it to five years might mean that within the normal time of two terms which makes 14 years you´d have the electorate to vote for approximately three times in the same time period. Thinking about what it costs the taxpayer according to this alteration, and given that each elected candidate holds the office for just one term, you´d have three presidents to pay their pensions. Not a cheap bargain for the taxpayer I think, and the costs for the elections even not included. Sounds more of an luxury and re the constitutional tasks for that office which is more representative and the necessity of reducing the term doesn´t seem to be so important.

RangeR

The Constitutional Convention are meeting to discuss this issue in 2 weeks. I'm going to try find a free hour or two to go through this thread; to combine the votes and opinions. When done [hopefully in the next few days], I'll post the summary here.

If you want to get your opinion across and counted, please do so before Friday 25th January 2013.

Thank you to everyone who voted so far, for taking to time out to do so.

RangeR

The Convention are meeting on January 26th and 27th 2013 to discuss the second issue put to us.

Reducing the Presidential term of office to five years and aligning it with the local and European elections



I've gone through this thread and the count is as follows.

For : 3
Against : 9


My personal view is that I don't see a huge issue with leaving things as they are. I'm just not that moved on the issue. If anything, it seems to be the cheaper option to have it at 7 years.

Here are some bullet points from this thread, which I shall be bringing with me at the weekend.

Of course, if anyone would like to put any other points across, feel free to do so. I'll be keeping a sporadic eye on this thread over the weekend.

Non private sessions will be streamed live on the constitution.ie website.

Peregrinus

One point: aligning the presidential election with euro and local elections might tend to make the overall campaign more party- and policy-focussed, with the presidential election being eclipsed. Having the presidential electin separately does make space for a campaign that focusses on different issues, such as Irish identity, or problems or challenges which the major parties prefer not to focus on. I'm not saying this always happens, but having a separate presidential election at least creates a space where it can happen, and it would be a pity to lose that.

Victor

RangeR wrote: »

If anything, it seems to be the cheaper option to have it at 7 years.

Elections cost a few million. Having multiple votes on the same day only increases the count time, not the polling time. Even at that the increase in the count time is marginal as there can be a lot of sitting around doing nothing and staff are paid a certain minimum number of hours anyway, whether they are used or not.

That said, every president gets a pension when they leave office.

phantom_lord

stevenmu wrote: »

Considering the role of the President is largely ceremonial I don't personally think there's anything wrong with a 7 year term.

Agree with this.

Sierra Oscar

I don't see why it needs to be changed really, what is wrong with the current setup? I think it is good that currently the presidential election does not fall with European / Locals / GE's. At least it allows for proper debate to occur surrounding the perspective candidates and their suitability for the role. Otherwise party politics will completely dominate the campaign.

Still cant really see why the constitutional convention is even discussing this. There are far more pressing issues relating to political reform and reform of our constitution that need discussing, but they have been omitted from the conventions terms of reference.

Annasopra

Live streaming here

https://www.constitution.ie/OnlineStreaming.aspx

Annasopra

The convention can be followed at #ccven and @consconv on Twitter

Results from change the presidential term here

https://twitter.com/IrishTLR/status/295517438945136641/photo/1/large

expectationlost

so the convention voted not to reduce the term but were voted 44 to 44 to only have 1 7 year term, so what does that mean?