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He will be the youngest taoiseach in history

He will be the youngest taoiseach in history

At 37 years old, Simon Harris He assumed the position this Tuesday Prime Minister of the Republic of Ireland after obtaining the necessary majority in the Dáil (the Irish Parliament). Last March, after the sudden resignation of Leo Varadkar, who cited “political and personal reasons” for leaving office, Harris became he taoiseach youngest in the history of the country.

Your party, the conservative Fine Gaelpower alternates with the centrist Fianna Fail led by Micheál Martin thanks to a government coalition in which the Green Party also participates. In his remaining year in power (as the country holds elections in 2025), Harris faces the enormous challenge of giving a boost to his formation, which has been in decline for years.

In 2020, after governing in coalition with Labour, Fine Gael fell to third place in the 2020 general electionsbehind Fianna Fáil and the nationalist Sinn Féin, the former political arm of the now inactive IRA. Despite his victory at the polls, Sinn Fein He did not obtain support later to form an executive, but since then the polls continue to place him as the favorite of the electorate, which is why they have claimed advance the electionscollect Efe.

[Los irlandeses rechazan la reforma de la Constitución que desvincula a la mujer de los “deberes del hogar”]

Abortion referendum

Despite her youth, Harris has had a very prolific career in politics. In 2016, he became Minister of Health. From that portfolio, led the 2018 abortion referendum campaignwith which the Government managed to soften the harsh legislation in this regard, in line with the social progressivism shown by Varadkar, of Indian origin and openly gay.

The end of his time in Health coincided with the start of the coronavirus pandemic in March 2020. That year he had to deal with the strictest confinements of a crisis that, according to general consensus, the Executive addressed with some success, according to with Efe. However, then was relocated to the Ministry of Education in a move that some consider a demotion aimed at curbing his ambitions, coinciding with a drop in Varadkar's popularity.

He taoiseach from TikTok

The truth is that Harris has known how to adapt to new times to reconnect with a society fed up with politics. Proof of this is that he has become one of the first Irish politicians to use TikTok and Instagram to get closer to the population.

His colleagues consider him a brilliant speaker. Not surprisingly, his first speech in the Dáil served to present the candidacy of Enda Kenny, then leader of Fine Gael, for the position of taoiseach.

They also value their ability to relate to the media, in which appears regularly to face moments of crisis and display a political instinct forged in the Christian Democratic youth and in street-level activism.

Without going any further, con At the age of 15, Harris founded a support group in her hometown of Greystones to families affected by autismconcerned about the lack of resources available in the area to deal with an illness that his brother suffers from.

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