The son of an Indian immigrant who came out as gay in 2015 is to be the next Irish prime minister, after he was voted leader of the country’s main governing party on Friday.
Irish prime minister-elect Leo Varadkar’s victory in the Fine Gael leadership contest, which took place after outgoing Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny announced his resignation last month, marks another significant step forward for equality, after the nation’s 2015 gay marriage referendum.
Varadkar, 38, is to become Ireland’s first gay prime minister as well as its youngest leader and the first from an ethnic minority background. His position is to be confirmed later this month when the parliament resumes after a break.
Varadkar faced a stiffer-than-expected challenge in the center-right Fine Gael election from his rival, Irish Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government Simon Coveney. Coveney is popular with the party’s grassroots, particularly in Fine Gael’s more conservative, rural redoubts.
Speaking after the final votes were tallied in Dublin, Varadkar said he was delighted, humbled and honored to win.
Coveney said that at least his children would be pleased that he had lost.
Kenny said Varadkar had his full support.
“This is a tremendous honor for him and I know he will devote his life to improving the lives of people across our country,” he said. “I want to also thank and pay tribute to Simon Coveney for making the leadership election a real contest. This has been a wonderful exercise in democracy for the Fine Gael party.”
Kenny, who led the party for 15 years and has been at the head of two governments for more than six years, this year delayed his resignation on a number of occasions.
First, he asked colleagues for time to visit the US for the annual St Patrick’s day celebrations and meet US president Donald Trump, continuing the unique tradition Ireland has of access to the White House every March 17. He also stayed on to attend the European Council summit in Brussels at the end of April, where the priorities for the Brexit negotiations were agreed.
Under internal Fine Gael rules, the parliamentary party has 65 percent of the vote, party members 25 percent and city and country councilors 10 percent .
Coveney captured majority support among grassroots members, but Varadkar won over the crucial parliamentarian college.
Varadkar’s father, Ashok, who comes from Mumbai, met his Irish mother, Miriam, while they both worked at an English hospital in Slough in the 1960s.
While the international media gathered in Dublin have focused on Leo Varadkar’s sexuality and immigrant family background, Irish news organizations zeroed in on his economic policies.
Some commentators dubbed Leo Varadkar “the Thatcherite” candidate after his comments during the two-week leadership contest that he wanted to be the champion “of those who get up early in the morning,” referring to former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher.
Although Leo Varadkar’s center-right politics are clearly conservative, he portrays the image of a new, progressive Ireland, symbolized best in May 2015 when the country voted overwhelmingly in favor of gay marriage.
It came just a few months after Varadkar came out publicly in a radio interview.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender groups in Ireland welcomed the domestic focus on Leo Varadkar’s ideology.
“I think it’s really significant that both his party and the media in Ireland focused on his policies, rather than him simply being a gay man who wants to lead the country,” Dublin-based Gay Community News editor Brian Finnegan said.
“It is a sign of how much Ireland has changed and moved on that no one really cares if he is gay here. Irish politicians were among the last sectors of our society to come out of the closet, but now at least we’ve got one gay man and a lesbian, [Irish Minister for Children and Youth Affairs] Katherine Zappone, both in the Cabinet. That would have been unthinkable perhaps even 10 years ago,” he said.
Leo Varadkar, a doctor educated at Trinity College, Dublin, first entered Irish politics in 2004, when he polled almost 5,000 votes in a local government election in the Dublin West constituency. Three years later he was elected to represent the area in parliament.
In 2014 he became Irish minister for health and following last year’s general election, when Fine Gael suffered losses at the ballot box, he entered a minority coalition as minister for social protection.
“It’s not something that defines me. I’m not a half-Indian politician, or a doctor politician, or a gay politician, for that matter. It’s just part of who I am. It doesn’t define me. It is part of my character, I suppose,” he said in a 2015 interview with RTE radio.
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