By Joe Higgins: from Daily Mail, March 4, 2009,
It really is remarkable how very embittered establishment figures and some political parties still are over their defeat in last year’s Referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.
Professor Brigid Laffan is Principal of the College of Human Sciences in University College Dublin. The UCD President’s office website informs us that she was appointed Jean Monet Professor of European Politics in 1991, that she is a member of the National Economic and Social Council and was appointed by Minister of Foreign Affairs, Micheal Martin, to the Irish Government’s ‘High Level Asia Strategy group’.
In short Professor Laffan is a pillar of the establishment which, presumably, is why she was invited to address the Fianna Fail Ard Fheis last Friday evening. And she is still very angry over the Lisbon defeat.
‘If you’d landed from Mars during the referendum campaign, you would have thought Joe Higgins was the Taoiseach of the country’ fumed the Professor to the delegates. What she was complaining about was ‘access to primary radio and TV that was given to people who were essentially non representative or weakly representative.’
We are not aware that Professor Laffan ever served as a humble County Councillor or as a Dail Deputy or Member of the European Parliament. But, as somebody who is ‘non representative’ or weakly reprentative’ ,we assume she was not complaining about her own participation for the ‘Yes’ side in very many radio and tv debates during the Lisbon campaign. We presume her outrage was over citizens opposed to the Treaty having such access.
Inadvertently, Professor Laffan makes a major admission. She implicitly acknowledges that the arguments of those opposed to Lisbon made a strong impression on voters, and in fact, made a bigger impression than the very wide range of establishment figures and politicians with whom they debated. And, clearly implied, is that for the rerun of the Lisbon Treaty this Autumn, opponents of the Treaty should be cut out of media debates. A European Union more democratic and more responsive to its citizens indeed!
Taoiseach Brian Cowen was equally hurting. Also speaking at the Ard Fheis he announced a tightening up on how referenda campaigns are financed because , ‘As we all saw in last year’s referendum, the system of regulation of political fundraising and spending is capable of being undermined by those who only pay lip service to transparency. ………I want these changes to be implemented before any referendum vote so that we can reach a stage where we can finally say that no individual will be able to distort a campaign through large scale personal fortunes.’
Well now. We can be sure that Mr. Cowen knows what he is talking about here. Any Fianna Fail Leader will be quite expert on political fundraising regulations being ‘undermined by a lack of transparency’ and of individuals being able to distort campaigns through ‘large scale political fortunes’.
We learned comprehensively how this skullduggery worked from the parade of Fianna Fail officials, Councillors and TDs at various tribunals of enquiry. We know, for example, how chief Fianna Fail fundraiser, Mr. Richardson, had a suite in one of Dublin’s most expensive hotels where he could receive in appropriate style generous donations from some of those with ‘large scale personal fortunes’ who wanted to ‘distort’ a few campaigns on behalf of their favourite political party.
However, we can assume that the Taoiseach was not referring to the cabal of major developers and speculators who have infested the Fianna Fail party for over forty years to the great detriment of proper planning in this State. He was, no doubt, referring to multi millionaire Mr. Ganley who financed the anti Lisbon Treaty campaign of the Libertas group.
In the past, in this column you will have found the most stringent criticism of Mr. Ganley and of his economic agenda – neo liberalism, more arms spending, more privatisation, less regulation. But it is frankly amazing that, without a hint of embarrassment, Mr. Cowen can stand up at his Party Conference and denounce Libertas for deploying just a very few of the tactics that his party has ruthlessly used to stay in power for much of the past forty years.
Sadly for Professor Laffan and Mr. Cowen, those of us on the Left who campaigned against the Lisbon Treaty will insist again in joining the debate. No doubt there will be an attempt to use the current economic disaster to terrify people into voting ‘Yes’. That might not seem like a great idea, however, as we point to the fact that the current crash is not unconnected to the neo liberal agenda being pushed by the EU for many years
The establishment should be warned that any interference with the right of Lisbon’s opponents to freely engage in the debate on the airwaves will be strongly resisted.
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