When it comes to cynical posturing in Irish political life, there are no more shameless practitioners than the leaders of the Green Party.
Once the Lisbon Treaty results were in and digested, the Greens took to the public stage with gusto to trumpet the renegotiation of their Programme for Government with Fianna Fail.
Indeed, it must have been a relief for the Green Party Leader, John Gormley, to move on from Lisbon for surely the campaign must have been a deeply uncomfortable personal experience for him. True, over the past two and a half years since entering government with Fianna Fail, the Greens have changed their ‘principles’ with the relief of a man discarding his suit for a few old duds. Still, turning everything he said for the previous ten years by supporting an EU Treaty that boosts the armaments merchants and sets the scene for military adventures abroad by EU forces, must have been a little embarasssing.
John O’Connell, a Labour Dail Deputy in the 1970s, referring to a reputed love of foreign trips by his Party Leader, the late Frank Cluskey, said, ‘When Frank came within five miles of an airport he went rigid with excitement.’ Whether this was justified or not I cannot say, but certainly being within five metres of a television cameral and microphone manifestly induces a similar effect on the current leader of the Green Party.
Certainly John Gormley’s encounters with countless microphones and journalists’ tape recorders over the last week delivered no end of hyperbole. In the wake of the announcement of a revised programme agreed with Fianna Fail, he described it as ‘transformational’.
Unfortunately, forty pages of text bear witness to far more ‘regurgitation’ than ‘transformation’. What is not transformed in any way is the fundamental policy pursued by Fianna Fail and the Green Party since the onset of the economic crash one year ago, which is that the price must be paid by ordinary working people and the poor who did not cause the crisis. Therefore the €4 billion Euro in cuts drawn up by the Government Committee of Axewielders chaired by Mr Colm McCarthy is to stand.
On top of this there are to be a raft of new taxes which will further crucify those who are already hard hit by levies and wage cuts. It will only add to the cynicism of those being hit that attempts are being made to pass these off as necessary for ‘environmental’ reasons.
To lash further increases on the price of petrol and justify this by calling it a ‘carbon’ tax is the height of hypocrisy. It will merely add to the burden of many workers who have to use a car to get to work either because there is no alternative public transport available or such public transport as exists is totally inadequate.
Similarly with water charges. Following the announcement of the revised programme one report suggested that a blanket annual fee of €175 would be charged to each household for its water supply. Should this be attempted, it would only be the beginning and, if allowed to be installed, such a charge would rise rapidly toward the figure of €700 per year mooted two years ago by the Minister for Education at the time, Mary Hanafin.
Neither Fianna Fail nor the Green Party would have any credibility in preaching to us about a tax on water being for environmental reasons when there have been no serious effort to incorporate in the building bye laws effective measures to save billions of litres of treated water each year.
To those who believed that they were a party that genuinely believed in policies to transform society with policies that would implement equality and environmental integrity, the Greens are now a discredited force. Shorn of any credibility they are an amalgam of careerist politicians who have salvaged their threatened their political existence with another shabby deal.
They are in for a rude awakening, however, if they believe that their latest warmed up offering will save them indefinitely. For surely the patience of the majority now being burdened with responsibility for the crimes of the few will turn into active and mobilised resistance.
The story of the Greens’ participation in this government will become increasingly similar to that of the labour Party in its Coalition with Fine Gael in the 1980′s. Constantly selling out those who looked to it for solutions to the crisis at that time, Labour limped to a belated and inglorious exit and was rewarded with its lowest vote in fifty years.
Perhaps Green Minister of State, Trevor Sargent, had an inkling of this when he made a rather pathetic plea to be moved from responsibility for the cabbages and cauliflowers of north Dublin to managing instead the Leinster House cabbage patch as Ceann Comhairle.
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