Defend your Decision – No Means No!

20/07/08

The city of Dublin has been thankfully free of imperial visits for most of the last 100 years.

With the departure of the last British government flunkey from Phoenix Park, the brunt of empire has been felt mainly by the Irish citizenry in the Six Counties.

Tomorrow (Monday), however, the streets of Dublin will again be graced by an empire builder who is keen to drag the Irish people into wars not of their making, chain them to an economic system that will leave most of them in poverty and deny them the legislative power to prevent or change any of it.

Nicolas Sarkozy, the right-wing president of France and the current incumbent of the European Union presidency, will arrive in the capital city as a man under severe political pressure, having to fight a rearguard battle against democracy.

Sarkozy, along with EU Commission president Jose Manuel Barrosso, is one of the luminaries of the project to build a unitary European empire.

This project was dealt a serious blow last month when the electorate in the Twenty-Six Counties availed of the opportunity to reject the Lisbon Treaty as a dangerous threat to the values of accountability, democracy and sovereignty.

The French president knows all about the dangers which are inherent in allowing the electorate to have a say in the plans shaped by the politically powerful. In 2005, the people of his own country rejected the proposed EU Constitution at the ballot box, followed by the Dutch people in the same year.

Hence, the Lisbon Treaty. After a period of reflection, the defeated bureaucrats in the EU opted for a change of course, changed the name of the Constitution and gave the populations of EU member states, bar the Twenty-Six Counties, no say in its implementation.

The scene was set for a sweeping ratification process. The majority of professional politicians across the EU could be counted on to betray their own people and vote away what little democracy they had in the parliaments that were supposed to be its epicentre.

The body that couldn’t be counted on by the empire builders was the working people; especially working people who had the good sense to see that the Lisbon Treaty was a direct attack on their class interests and rights as citizens.

On June 12, this fact was proved admirably by working people across the Twenty-Six Counties.

The Lisbon Treaty was defeated by a resounding margin and the plans for empire lay in ruins.

Mr Sarkozy is making his trip to Ireland to lecture the electorate and their politicians on the mistake of taking that decision. On several occasions, he has already stated his contempt for it.

Just this week, he told members of his conservative party that “the Irish will have to vote again”.

The response of those charged with representing the interests of the Irish people to this astonishingly arrogant attitude was tempered to say the least.

The Twenty-Six County minister for foreign affairs, Micheál Martin, declined to respond at all and merely declared that his government was considering “all the options” in relation to the democratic rejection of the Treaty.

Eamon Gilmore, the leader of the pro-Treaty Labour Party, said that Sarkozy had “seriously put his foot in it”, which appeared to infer that he had no problem with Sarkozy’s opinions, just the fact that they had been made public.

éirígí chairperson Brian Leeson has called on people to show Mr Sarkozy they are prepared to defend their referendum verdict by joining the Campaign Against the European Union Constitution demonstration tomorrow.

“From the moment it was announced that the electorate in the Twenty-Six Counties had rejected the Lisbon Treaty, Mr Sarkozy has shown complete disdain for that verdict,” Brian said.

“Sarkozy’s derogatory comments and his recent suggestion that the Twenty-Six Counties should hold a second referendum on the Treaty compliment the EU’s project of removing power from the hands of citizens and placing it under the control of unaccountable bureaucrats.

“A politician who has ignored the verdict of his own electorate on the future of the EU should think twice before he comes to Ireland to lecture citizens here about their democratic responsibilities.”

Brian continued: “éirígí activists will be joining with many other progressive people tomorrow to ensure that Sarkozy gets the message: ‘The people have spoken – the Treaty is dead’. If Brian Cowen has any interest in the opinion of the majority of Irish citizens, he will tell his counterpart exactly the same thing.

“What is needed now is not more talks and summits between politicians who remain ideologically committed to the implementation of the Lisbon Treaty. What is needed is a grassroots, Europe-wide discussion on how the citizens of this continent can build an alternative to the right-wing policies they have rejected when given the chance.

“As Irish people, along with the people of France and Holland, led the way in rejecting the EU Constitution and the resulting Treaty, so Irish people should pioneer a democratic alternative.

“If we simply sit back and wait for the likes of Cowen and Sarkozy to propose an acceptable alternative, we will be waiting a very long time indeed.”

Tomorrow’s (Monday) CAEUC demonstration will take place at 12.30pm outside Leinster House, Merrion Square, Dublin.

Bígí Linn!