IRELAND : Great Survivor Is Yesterday’s Man

After a controversial lifetime in Irish politics, Prime Minister Charles J. Haughey has had what looks like his last hurrah.

The 67-year-old man known to one and all as Charley has been replaced as prime minister-elect by a dedicated enemy in his own Fianna Fail Party, former Finance Minister Albert Reynolds, who will take over officially on Monday.

As prime minister, Haughey (pronounced HAW-hee) governed more in the flamboyant, autocratic style of a Tammany Hall politico or Chicago’s Richard J. Daley than a modern chief of government. From beginning to end, his reign was marked by charges of corruption, and it was one of those that finally brought him down--a 10-year-old accusation of tapping the telephones of political journalists who wrote stories critical of him.

Until recently, Haughey was viewed as the great survivor, who managed through wheeling and dealing to avoid defeat, no matter what the nature of the charges against him.

As the distinguished Irish editor, government minister and diplomat Conor Cruise O’Brien once put it: “I will believe Charles Haughey is dead when I see him buried at a crossroads at midnight with a stake driven through his heart, and even then I will carry a clove of garlic in my pocket for good luck.”

Haughey’s father had been a gunrunner for the Irish Republican Army in the years after World War I. The younger Haughey first came to public attention when he helped burn a British flag over Trinity College in Dublin after the Allied victory in 1945 and took part in the riot that followed.

A self-made businessman who made millions as an accountant and in real estate, Haughey married Maureen Lemass, daughter of a prime minister, Sean Lemass, who launched Haughey on his political career.

For much of that career, he was a master of patronage and tightly held the reins of party power, first becoming leader and prime minister in 1979. He lost two of the three general elections in 1981 and 1982 and spent four years as leader of the opposition before returning to power.

Haughey fought many political battles with his political opposite, Garret Fitzgerald, a soft-spoken, scholarly leader of the Fine Gael Party.

But in recent weeks, the scandal involving the bugging, which he allegedly ordered, had become more intense, and Haughey decided to step down rather than face the possibility that his own party might vote him out of the leadership.

Adding to the sting, his handpicked successor, Finance Minister Bertie Ahern, was roundly defeated Thursday by Reynolds, whom Haughey had fired from the Finance Ministry post for trying to unseat him last November.

“All in all,” commented novelist and biographer Stan Gebler Davies, “it has been an astonishing career. Who else could appoint a former policeman (Sean Doherty) as minister for justice, dismiss him for having journalists’ phones tapped and then appoint him Speaker of the Senate?”

In the past year, Haughey’s rambunctious manner was overshadowed by the more distinguished persona of Irish President Mary Robinson, and increasingly he appeared to be yesterday’s man.

As the knowledgeable political columnist of the London Sunday Telegraph put it: “Charley was victim, among other things, of time warp. He was the old breed, a rogue who played up the Ulster issue for votes.

“But the voters are younger and more sophisticated now--and Charley had lost his appeal for them.”