2006考研英语命题预测题五

Section Ⅱ Reading Comprehension

Part A

TEXT 1

    FINE GAEL, Ireland's main opposition party, has a new leader. Having unceremoniously deposed John Bruton, a former prime minister, on January 31st, it quickly put in his place the man who had plotted his downfall, Michael Noonan. He is a skilled parliamentarian with wide ministerial experience, and a master of the quotable sound bite, not to say of the knife. But can he bring his party back to office?

    Mr. Bruton had been ten years in the job, including 2 1/2 years at the head of a coalition government in the mid-1990s. He was a man of substance, but suffered, said party critics, from a "charisma deficit". Mr. Noonan, at 57 four years older, has both substance and image, and a keen desire for power. But he inherits a demoralized party, unsure of its identity and role in Irish politics, and divided by the manner of his succession. He has not long to turn it round: a general election is due by June 2002, and the prime minister, Bertie Ahern, leader of Fianna Fail, may be tempted to call one sooner.

    Part of Fine Gael's trouble has been an inability to distinguish itself from Fianna Fail. Fine Gael laid the foundations of the new Irish state in the 1920s. But Fianna Fail built it up and, having first taken office in 1932, has been in government for some 50 of the years since. Fine Gael has been out of office for most of the past 14 years. Both parties are essentially conservative and centrist, both rooted in the nationalist past. Their hostility goes back to the civil war that sprang up when nationalists split over the terms of the treaty that brought freedom from Britain. But the recent modernization of Irish society has made their similarities far bigger than their differences.