PRESIDENT OF EIRE
New Post For De Valera
(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 11 p.m.)
, DUBLIN, June 19. Mr Eamon de Valera, aged. 76, last night set the seal on 40 years’ of service to the Irish Republic by being elected President.
The tall, bespectacled leader of the Fianna Fail Party received 538,058 votes against 417,482 polled for his Fine Gael opponent, General Sean Maceoin. Thus the man who was sentenced to death by the British for his part in the Easter rising of 1916, but who escaped because of his American birth, is to live in the old Vice-regal lodge.
But though Mr de Valera won the election comfortably, he was beaten in a constitutional referendum polled at the same time. In the referendum. Mr de Valera, who resigned on Wednesday night as the republic’s Prime Minister, proposed a change in the Constitution to abolish the 37-year-old system of proportional representation. He and his party proposed its replacement by single-member constituencies with voting on a “first past the post” basis. With results from only three of the 40 constituencies to come in this morning, it was certain that the newly-elected President’s bid was doomed. The latest figures were: Against proportional representation: 365,664.
For proportional representation: 409.008.
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Bibliographic details
Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28926, 20 June 1959, Page 13
Word Count
206PRESIDENT OF EIRE Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28926, 20 June 1959, Page 13
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