Go Bertie go

Bertie Ahern should be the new EU Commission president. He has all the credentials. In common with former commission president Jacques Santer he has shown an inability to deal with systematic corruption in his own ranks, though ultimately this forced Santer's resignation and that of his other commissioners in 1999.

Maybe Bertie has more of the characteristics and qualities of current EU Commission President Romano Prodi, who was supposed to be the reforming new broom in the Commission and stamp out bad practices and efficiencies.

Has Bertie ever told Romano the one about how he up every tree in North Dublin but still couldn't find Ray Burke's crock of gold? Like Romano, Bertie has talked the talk but has done little to actually change the bad practices at the heart of corruption.

Then there is Bertie's deal making ability, first shown during his terms as Labour Minister in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when he ran rings around trade unions and sucked them into the web of partnership. He was part of governments that formed ground-breaking coalition deals with the Progressive Democrats and then the Labour Party, showing innovativeness and tenaciousness to cling to power.

His record on the Peace Process gives him that international standing that many of his competitors don't have.

So has Bertie Ahern been using the EU presidency as a prolonged advertising campaign of his credentials? French President Jacques Chirac described the Irish EU presidency as the "best ever".

Perhaps Ahern's most attractive quality is the ability to sublimate himself in whatever his current project is. In recent weeks, he has visited the leaders of the other 24 EU states to firm up their position on the EU constitution, yet we don't know what his position was, just like we didn't really know back in 1987 what he felt about the ESB strike, yet he still negotiated an end to it.

This is what Ahern most offers to the EU. Above all, he will protect the status quo, the powerful will stay powerful and the weak get a little more crumbs than expected, so everyone leaves happy.

Now, after an electoral slap in the EU and local elections, maybe Bertie fancies spending his last political years leading an international institution unaccountable and very distant from the voters who have, it seems, fallen out of love with him.

As some hugely respected and influential candidates fall at each hurdle, Bertie is still there in contention. Maybe the rest of Europe is now learning what Ahern's mentor and former master so aptly saw in his diligent pupil. He is "the most devious, the most cunning, the most ruthless of them all".