Another No Vote is the Real Threat to Irish Sovereignty

An Spailpín Fánach finds the current Lisbon debate exasperating. The issues seem quite simple indeed – either we are capable as a nation of electing governments to govern, or we are not. And if we are not capable of this fundamental aspect of running a democracy, then whether or not we have one, two, or four-and-twenty EU Commissioners is really by the way. It’s the least of our worries.

There are loud voices on the No side talking about Irish sovereignty. It would interesting to find out what exactly they mean by sovereignty. Sovereignty, as An Spailpín understands it, is the ability of the Irish government to treat with other sovereign governments to form international agreements.

There is a ground-up process here – everyone in Ireland who spent long years negotiating the Lisbon treaty in the first place is either elected him or herself or else answers to those who are elected by the people to represent the people. If the Irish nation doesn’t like Lisbon, then it needs to start voting for politicians who feel the same way, and let them negotiate the international treaties instead. That’s how it works.

It’s the only way it can work. The Lisbon treaty is long and complex. Suppose you don’t like one article. Is that enough to shoot it down? Do you think, of the hundreds and hundreds of people that wrote this document, every one of them thinks it’s perfect? At what stage do you find it so objectionable that you consign all those years of work to the dustbin? And are you prepared to accept the consequences of that?

An Spailpín is sadly aware that there are those who are planning to vote No as a protest vote. This is a very misguided attitude to take. Because while that No voter may believe in good conscience that he or she is doing his best by the nation, that is not at all obvious to the exterior world.

A No vote as an anti-government protest vote makes political sense to the exterior world only in the sense of support for anti-Lisbon parties having similar support. This means that there is a credible political philosophy behind the No vote, and once something exists, it can be dealt with. But pro-Lisbon parties dominate the Dáil. Dominate it. If a majority of people keep shooting down a treaty supported by ninety per cent of the politicians they themselves elect, there is a profound and serious disconnect in the entire system.

This dualism is what makes it very difficult for other political cultures to understand how to do business with the Irish. If the Irish can’t be consistent about this, how can they be consistent in international agreements? When Europe deals with the Irish, to whom are they really talking?

To talk of European wrath in response to a second no vote is disingenuous. It would be more a question of indifference that wrath. And this is bad news.

If it were wrath, at least Europe would care. If it’s indifference, the more politically evolved European nations will simply continue along themselves and slide the Irish to the periphery, where it seems they want to be in the first place. As expressed in consecutive referenda. And if the Irish want that, fine. It’s really no skin or Europe’s nose either way.

If your son or daughter is running with a bad crowd after school you experience wrath, because you are concerned for his or her future. If it’s the neighbour’s kid, you simply expect the police to lock the brat up and be done with it. You feel sorry for the parents, of course, but no so much as you’d bother your barney getting involved yourself. That’s all heartache and no reward. Who’d be bothered with that?

Anybody who thinks Ireland can drag these negotiations out indefinitely while we mess around here needs to ask if the rest of Europe sees us as neighbours or family. It’s pints of cop-on all around for the Gael.

The miracle of Europe, the fact that so many nations have found common bonds after spending all of recorded Western history fighting wars against each other, is a little lost on us here in Ireland because we were not involved in those wars ourselves, except as a dominion of another power. And the fact that we are still tied economically in so many ways to Britain, who has not quite cottoned on to the fact she is no longer a world power on her own, creates certain tension here.

One of the reasons for independence from the United Kingdom in the first place was that we, the Irish nation, believed we had no say in the governance of the UK. Irish politicians and diplomats and have punched above their weight in Europe since we joined the EEC in 1973 and we are not viable as an independent island without alliance to greater markets. Ireland gets so much more from Europe than we put in.

Let’s try and act like grown-ups for once in our lives and acknowledge that being democrats has responsibilities as well as rights. In this case, having mandated our government to treat with other governments we should accept what they come back with, rather than simply throwing rattles from prams just because we can. Vote yes.

FOCAL SCÓIR: It is a measure of the way the No campaign has campaigned that when I discovered the poster in this post online I honestly couldn’t immediately tell if it was from Cóir themselves or one of the parodies. I really couldn’t. The People Before Profit Alliance – I think; the comrades change their name more often than Sellafield, you know – have a poster with the clever line that Lisbon is “from the same geniuses that brought you the Recession.” A bit rich from the same geniuses that brought you Tito’s Yugoslavia, Zhivkov’s Bulgaria, Hoxha’s Albania, Mao’s China, Stalin's Russia and Ceauşescu’s Romania, don't you think?





Technorati Tags: Ireland, politics, Lisbon Treaty, Europe

Voting Yes

How odd it was to see Micheál Martin and Enda Kenny go Tango and Cash on Questions and Answers last night. Tango and Cash, as you recall, is the cult 1980s movie about two maverick cops who put aside personal differences to ace the bad guys, and that’s what an increasingly desperate establishment has been doing in the hopes of saving the listing referendum campaign.

How did it come to this? Micheál Martin may have put his finger on it without realising it on Rodney Rice’s Radio show on Saturday. Martin was making the point that the Lisbon Treaty is a triumph of Irish diplomacy, a credit to the Irish presidency of the EU that they were able to rescue the project when all seemed lost after the French and Dutch shot down the original constitution. This then begs they question: why on Earth didn’t they say so before?

Most constitutions are aspirational documents. They suggest things rather than laying them down. The Irish constitution, like the man who wrote it, likes things in black and white. This is why we end up having referenda every couple of years when the plates shift and readjust in Brussels. Any Irish government is generally faced with three questions coming up to one of these referenda on how best to tackle it.

1. Draft a constitutional amendment to say that from here on in changes in Brussels can be effected by act of Parliament without recourse to referendum.


2. Try and sneak the referendum through by flying it under the radar, hoping the core vote will come out and Richard Boyd Barrett is on his holidays. In Cuba, probably.


3. Give the electorate credit for not being complete dummies and have a debate about the European project that will be as informative as it will be mind-numbingly boring.

The first choice is the most sensible of the three, and the least likely to happen. Not least if Lisbon is squeaked through this time around. One of the reasons why referendum is in danger of being lost is that the people feel that the Government has been going for a fast one, and they don’t like that one little bit. They certainly will not sign off on a licence to do that without considerable persuading.

The second option is the one that the Government chose, and it’s clearly blown up in their face. RBB isn’t at the van of this one – although your vigilant quillsman saw him on the news last night, protesting – but there’s a whole other bunch that are, existing without visible means of support. It is a highly mistaken assumption that the electorate are sheep, despite behaving like sheep so regularly in the polling booth. Every now and then these lambs grow fangs, and start biting people on the arse. This is one such instance of that.

The third option was the way to go. If the Government said from the end of the EU presidency that the Lisbon treaty was the greatest act of Irish diplomacy and statesmanship since Frank Aiken was at the UN in the 1960s, that would have been the way to go. They could then repeat the message over the two years or so they had to campaign and that would then deprive Libertas of the opportunity to spout the sort of nonsense that they have been doing. Most of Libertas’ arguments are mischievous at best. Ireland’s sovereign position hasn’t changed since 1973, and won’t. Ireland’s commissioner is going anyway, and this is the best possible compromise. Germany’s voting power doubling in respect to Ireland still leaves Germany at a disadvantage. There for four million Irish, eighty million Germans. For democracy to come into effect Germany would have to increase its voting power by a factor of twenty.

The fact that the Germans themselves are willing to put up with such an arrangement that flies in the face of logic (and what could be more anathema to Germans than something that flies in the face of logic?) is testimony to the remarkable deal Ireland gets in Europe. How is this going to be strengthened by a no vote? If we vote no, it means we do not trust the Government to negotiate these deals at European level – even though we elected them to do just that just a year ago. And if the Government aren’t to negotiate these deals, who does? Declan Ganley?

Eamon Dunphy was rambling on Marian Finucane’s radio show on Sunday about some quote from Valéry Giscard d'Estaing that the Lisbon Treaty contains a clause that is so momentous that it is buried deep in the legal thickets. A clause that is so divisive that if it were only known the treaty would be held in contempt by all right thinking citizens from the Urals to Belmullet.

Eamon did not go on to say what exactly this mystery clause is. Is it the third secret of Fatima? Is it the DaVinci Code? Is it why Cristiano Ronaldo gets so much money when he’s not a great player? Is Valéry Giscard d'Estaing a member of the Illuminati, and wants Europe to be run by the lizards?

Eamon didn’t say, and An Spailpín certainly doesn’t know what it is either. An Spailpín is inclined to suspect, however, that Eamo is simply spoofing, at which activity Eamo would have a bit of previous.

The Government’s attempts to sneak the Lisbon Treaty through under the radar does them no credit, and some mischievous elements have been able to combine the brewing discontent over the plummeting economy, the fact that people don’t like being sold pups and the fact the treaty is unintelligible to the man in the street into a huge groundswell of opposition to the treaty. As far as your Spailpín is concerned, not understanding the treaty is not sufficient reason to vote against it. If you elect a Government to legislate, you’ve got to trust them to that that job, until such time as you elect someone else. When Mr Ganley is elected to something, we’ll know he has a mandate. In the meantime, voting yes is the only sensible option.





Technorati Tags: Ireland, politics, Lisbon Treaty, Europe

Is It Just Me, or Do Those No to Lisbon Posters Seem Strangely Familiar?

Technorati Tags: Ireland, politics, lisbon treaty, posters, propoganda