Lisbon Too

About 2 week ago I blogged that I thought Lisbon was slipping away and that defeat was likely and that a general election would follow as indeed would a leadership contest in Fianna Fail. Given the recovery in public support for the Treaty that scenario now looks less likely although the Yes camp aren’t out of the woods yet. So where has it all changed? Well a number of things have happened. Firstly the left opposition to the treaty have once again been outflanked by the far right. Coir’s attention grabbing posters claiming that the minimum wage will drop to €1.84, along with the arrival in Ireland of the libertarian UKIP has gone down like a lead balloon. The constantly grating clever dick accent of Nigel Farage has not connected with, to quote Joe Higgins, “the ordinary working class man and woman”. The reality is that Farage cares very little about Ireland and what it does rather he’s more interested in raising his profile in Britain as he’s coincidently announced he’s to break the traditional moratorium on challenging the House of Common’s speaker because he, Bercow, is on the left of the Tory Party.

Now another home counties accent has re-joined the fray, the sinister Cockney tribesman Declan Ganley. Ganley is a man with his past in a closet. Famously he retired from politics after being heavily defeated in the European elections. Ganley queried the count and when he was granted a re-count after he claimed a wheelie bin full of his votes disappeared, the result saw his actual vote drop as Labour votes were found in his pile. Ganley claims to have been an adviser to a Baltic state where Ministers subsequently claimed they’d never heard of him! His company Rivada boasts on its board retired US generals. Rivada has extensive contracts with the US Military for communications systems. His party Libertas is a private company. In the European Elections he won just 1 of the 100 seats they’d targeted. He’s not the only US military contractor to oppose Lisbon, but he’s the most vocal. Youtube footage shows him hiding a US flag before an interview with a German channel. I suppose it’s a case of an old Tory hiding Old Glory!

Labour MEP Nessa Childers was canvassing with us since I last blogged on the issue. The response to the canvas is very positive in Wexford. Wexford voted no in June 2008 by a margin of about 7%. If the canvas is suggesting now more voters in a constituency like Wexford and if this swing is being reflected nationally then I believe that the treaty can now pass. Wexford is a typical bell weather constituency in this referendum. If there is a swing to Yes in Wexford and it is replicated all over the country then I believe that Lisbon will pass. However if Marx could declare that it was too early to pronounce on the French Revolution 70 years after the event, then I’m more than entitled to warn against what could happen between now and polling day.
Coir hijacked the internationalist James Connolly to suggest he'd have backed their narrow reactionary campaign. Coir are anti-woman and it shows an ignorance of history to suggest that Connolly was such.
The Yes campaign has sharpened its focus, the red herrings on QMV, self amending treaty, neutrality, abortion, conscription, workers rights etc that surfaced the last time have been nailed. The real fear is that public opposition to the government’s NAMA proposal will galvanise some voters to vote against their better interests as they’ve had enough of the shambles. That’s understandable but voters had that chance last June. There are some things more important than Cowen and Co and this one of them!

Time to Libert-ask the key questions

A year ago Libertas was the creation of a recluse Galway neo con businessman who founded a company that claimed to be a think tank. Only Ireland could produce Declan Ganley. A Galway man with a home counties accent, whose mysterious money created an aura of acceptance. The Irish psyche always has a soft spot for the quare fella with the foreign accent to give him authenticity; Eamon De Valera, Sean McBride or Sean Thornton each dissidents in their day. Declan Ganley became the Mister Pussy of Irish politics, on the surface you see something quiet different to what goes on beneath.
It’s a symptom of how far politics in Ireland has been discredited that someone like Declan Ganley can get so far in a year. His company Libertas employs as members, employees of one of his other interest Rivada. Rivada was awarded substantial contracts in telecommunications in Iraq after the 2003 invasion. Rivada also has been given US defence contracts in communications and boasts ex US military personnel on its board. Ganley who, it seems, uses his dual nationality when it suits him has an equally ambivalent attitude to being Irish, his company Libertas opposes “our political elite” but if he can get a dig out from another nation’s political elite sure what the hell? But Ganley will combine with those who oppose the US military stopover at Shannon and begorrah he’ll forget about his business interests because he knows that when it comes to having a cut at a discredited government, his ultimate interest is in creating in Ireland the circumstances where Ireland exists economically as Europe but citizens are riding second class behind his “elite”. It’s his intention to create an Ireland riding side rear guard on a neo con driven US agenda, at lest it was until Obama got into power. Ganley will transfer Ireland’s European reliance to one on the US. He’ll replace a social model of society with an economic one.

As someone who sees the benefit in the Lisbon Treaty from the point of the Charter of Fundamental Rights and in particular education and how this could benefit pupils in Ireland, I smile when I see this Hertfordshire man’s butler raise the Irish flag over his home from his flagpole overlooking the N17, the road that leads to Shannon Airport. What does the man with the Alaskan board actually understand about the lives of ordinary people?

Let me put my hand up. I’ve voted against Maastricht but for Amsterdam, against Nice but for Lisbon. I’ve always felt that when you look on an EU Treaty you vote because of one key issue. I could not have got through college but for getting a job in Germany during the 80’s. I never got a J1 I always went to Germany because it was new culture. My recollection of the 80’s was that in Europe the left and right had an understanding that mutually assured their dominance. This was why the European Christian Democrats so successfully marginalised Margaret Thatcher in EU negotiations. Her response was to cosy up to Ronald Reagan. The EU worked because of the balances that politically existed. Now with the upsurge in regional parties with an obstructionist agenda such as UKIP the neo cons see their opportunity and strike to bring European progress to a halt.
But my concerns about EU as a military power disappeared when the Berlin wall collapsed. I still have concerns about the EU and it’s because of the democratic deficit that is inherent in the structures. Lisbon was a way to bring in more democracy and accountability into decision making.
And this is where I wonder about Declan Ganley, why is it that he’s big not accountability in Eurioe but won’t disclose to SIPO details of Libertas’ funding, 6 months after he gave the commitment on TV that he would. I wonder about his connections with an Albanian solicitor who was subsequently murdered amidst allegations of financial connections with businessmen. I wonder about how Declan Ganley claimed he was a key government advisor in the 1990’s in a Baltic state. I also wonder how if CJ Haughey & Co hadn’t discredited politics in this country how far Declan Ganley could have ever got if questions when asked were answered? Once on a local radio discussion on CJ Haughey I offered the opinion that the problem with this country is that it takes 15 years to find out what’s going on today. This maxim doesn’t only apply to the affairs of the late Taoiseach but also our dissident Solzhenitsyn from the salt mines in Glenamaddy.