1990 Presidential Election and Loss of The Leadership
Dukes received little credit for the Tallaght Strategy, and the party's failure to make significant gains in 1989 left some Fine Gael TDs with a desire for a change at the top. Their opportunity came in the wake of the historic 1990 presidential election. Fine Gael chose Austin Currie TD as their candidate. He had been a leading member of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association movement in the 1960s and had been a member of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) before moving south.
Initially, Fianna Fáil's Brian Lenihan had been favourite to win, however after a number of controversies arising from the brief Fianna Fáil administration of 1981–82, and Lenihan's dismissal as Minister for Defence mid-way through the campaign, the Labour Party's Mary Robinson emerged victorious. To many in Fine Gael, the humiliation of finishing third was too much to bear and a heave was launched against Dukes. He was subsequently replaced as party leader by John Bruton.
Read more about this topic: Alan Dukes
Famous quotes containing the words presidential, election, loss and/or leadership:
“Mr. Roosevelt, this is my principal request—it is almost the last request I shall ever make of anybody. Before you leave the presidential chair, recommend Congress to submit to the Legislatures a Constitutional Amendment which will enfranchise women, and thus take your place in history with Lincoln, the great emancipator. I beg of you not to close your term of office without doing this.”
—Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)
“Well, I am chiefly interested in the renomination, so don’t get disconsolate over that. If we lost the election I shall feel that the party is rejected, whereas if I fail to secure the renomination it will be a personal defeat.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“I have always observed, when there is as much sour as sweet in a compliment, that an Englishman is eternally at a loss within himself, whether to take it, or let it alone: a Frenchman never is.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“The liberal wing of the feminist movement may have improved the lives of its middle- and upper-class constituency—indeed, 1992 was the Year of the White Middle Class Woman—but since the leadership of this faction of the feminist movement has singled out black men as the meta-enemy of women, these women represent one of the most serious threats to black male well-being since the Klan.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)