The Mixture as Before

The only thing wrong with last week's general election in Ireland was that it didn't solve anything. The campaign was one of the shortest on record --lasting only four weeks after Premier Sean Lemass decided to take his Fianna Fail Party to the country.

After 3 1/2 years of rule dependent on an alliance with independent members of the Dail--the Irish lower house--Lemass hoped to get a working majority. The opposition came from the Fine Gael Party led by James Dillon and the small but aggressive Labor Party of Brendan Corish. Lemass could, and did, campaign on the economic progress of recent years (TIME cover July 12, 1963). Fine Gael and Labor concentrated their fire on the lack of welfare planning. Fine Gael, which is normally conservative and devoted to free enterprise, veered left and proposed a "more equitable distribution" of the nation's wealth.

Apparently, Ireland's 1,700,000 voters did not know quite what to make of it as they trudged to the polls on election day. After casting their ballots, everyone sat back and waited while election officials struggled with the complex Irish proportional representation system. In two constituencies, recounts were called for by narrowly beaten candidates. In Longford, West Meath, the loser claimed that mental patients in Mullingar hospital, allowed to vote for the first time, had been subject to undue influence by their doctors. With three seats subject to recount, at week's end Lemass' Fianna Fail held 71 seats, a rise of one; Fine Gael, 46. Labor won 21 seats and Independents captured three. With almost half of the 144 seats in the Dail and the support of at least one independent, Lemass could govern Ireland--but just barely.

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