Posted on 05/10/2006 11:41:45 AM PDT by Irish_Thatcherite
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
It’s time to stop the sinister Shinners By: John Cooney
THE week-end news story which jumped out of the pages was the revelation that Sinn Fein is linked to a major abuse of the voting register. The Sunday Tribune’s front-page report was based on allegations by Fianna Fail back-bencher Sean Ardagh, one of my local T.D.’s in the Dublin South Central constituency.
Sean, who is chairman of the Joint Oireachtas Justice committee, has done a civic service to voters by brining to the Government’s notice the first concrete evidence of electoral fraud that is imputed to be a hallmark of Sinn Fein.
In a letter to Environment Minister, Dick Roche, Sean has requested him to investigate fully “a major abuse of the register and voting in recent elections” in an apartment complex within the constituency.
The allegation is that at the time of the 2004 local elections some 131 persons in that flat complex were on the electoral register even though they were not on the tenant records held by Dublin City Council. In one flat, he further alleges, were three Sinn Fein figures who also were not on the Council tenants’ list.
Sinn Fein, of course, has denied the allegations and counter-charges that Ardagh is “throwing mud” and “playing for publicity”. The Shinners’ bluster cuts no ice with the vast bulk of Dail deputies who can cite similar experiences to that of Deputy Ardagh.
Indeed, last in the week in the Dail the Fine Gael leader, Enda Kenny, adverted to this scam when he asked Taoiseach Bertie Ahern if he concurred that “one party in the House has been and is actively involved in wholesale fraudulent activity in regard to the electoral register”.
Enda Kenny’s question helped bring into the public domain the truly shocking reality that the electoral register is up to ninety per cent wrong in parts of Dublin, a comprehensive file on which has been compiled by Fianna Fail. These figures are also backed up by an academic study of a Dublin constituency by Shane Conneely of Trinity College Dublin.
This study concluded there are as many errors in the electoral register as there were voters in the 2002 general election that returned the Fianna Fail-PD Coalition to power.
Rather than just blame Sinn Fein for exploiting a gaping irregularity in the democratic system, I would chide the governing partners for their failure to address this Achilles heel before now when we are in the run-in stage to the next general election.
It also baffles me that the Government did not send out electoral register forms along with the recent Census questionnaire, as suggested by Labour’s Ruairi Quinn. The failure of the Government to do so is a clear-cut instance of malign neglect and amounts to a flagrant disrespect for the voting rights of so many young people, especially students, who live in the flatlands of Dublin’s inner city and suburbs.
Just as these justified fears of huge electoral fraud were being ventilated, I received a phone call from Nancy Smyth, the dedicated champion of the Michael Davitt museum in Straide. Nancy informed me of her distress at being bullied by a Sinn Fein member of Mayo County Council because she had not included a Sinn Fein figure in a panel of politicians who are due to speak on Sunday June 4 in Pontoon during the commemoration of the death one hundred years ago of the Founder of the Land League.
The speakers are Minister Dick Roche and the three Higgins’s - Jim, the Fine Gael MEP, Michael D, the inimitable conscience of Labour and Joe, the intrepid Socialist. This session, which, incidentally is being chaired by myself, will be closed by Enda Kenny.
Some readers may feel that Nancy should have offered a place on the platform to Sinn Fein. That is a matter of political judgement. But the kernel of the matter is that as the organiser of the conference it is Nancy Smyth’s prerogative to select the speakers.
She has left Sinn Fein out in the cold on the grounds that for the past thirty years when she was slogging to raise money for the Davitt museum, there was no one in Sinn Fein to give her help.
No doubt, the Shinners were too preoccupied in those days with causing death and mayhem to the Unionist population and innocent Catholics in their morally wrong campaign to annexe the fourth green field.
During this period, too, let it not be forgotten these so called defenders of democracy were air-brushing out of history the essential message for today of Michael Davitt, the ex-Fenian who renounced violence to pursue peaceful politics.
Let us be in no doubt, too, that Michael Davitt would have been appalled by both the 1916 Easter Rising and by the “Long war” of sectarian carnage waged by the Provisional IRA-Sinn Fein in our days.
When I hear Gerry Adams or Martin McGuinness acclaim Davitt as the Nelson Mandela of Irish politics, and proclaim Davitt as the role model for the current peace process in the North, then I would be prepared to reassess the democratic credentials of the Sinn Fein leadership in a more favourable light.
As it stands, the Sinn Fein Councillor, Gerry Murray has the gall to publicly claim Davitt as the inspiration for the protest of the Rossport Five, whom he also wants to be canonised at the Davitt commemoration.
Gerry Murray’s murky strategy is to gain power by stealth. To get an unmerited platform by the back-door at the Davitt commemo -ration. He is falsifying history for political advantage for Sinn Fein. He is using bully boy tactics sotto voce that may have gone down well in Catholic Belfast but which will not work with a more discerning electorate in County Mayo.
As Nancy knows, I came under the same kind of pressure from Sinn Fein and their fellow travellers such as the politically naïve Dr Jerry Cowley last summer when I was arranging a debate on the Corrib gas at the General Humbert-Michael Davitt Summer School. Their intimidation did not succeed then, and it will not work in June at the Davitt commemoration.
Too many sensible voters in Mayo see through the sham tactics of how Sinn Fein attempted to exploit the real apprehensions about the safety of the Corrib field in pursuit of their shady political objectives. Now that Shell is moving forward with its revised plan - and Taoiseach Bertie Ahern has come off the fence and backed it - we should be supporting this people-enriching project in the interests of the common good.
No doubt, Sinn Fein will continue to make mischief, as is their wont, but the West has woken up to its dodgy game of sabotage and disinformation.
Be in no doubt, the next general election is about the defence of Irish democracy from the incursions of Sinn Fein, whose mindset remains subversive of the values cherished in constitutional politics.
So, it was good to watch Enda Kenny perform well at the Fine Gael Ard Fheis which was another stepping stone on the way to making a Fine Gael-Labour led coalition a more credible option than a Fianna Fail-led government dependent on Sinn Fein for the balance of power.
Votes will be precious in the next election if the Sinn Fein Frankenstein is to be stopped in its sinister tracks. No surrender to the bullyboys, Nancy.
A ping to the ongoing conspiracy against Irish democracy.
"We applaud blowing up pregnant women and the execution-style murder of 'touts', certainly, but we would never falsify election records. That would be an outrage!" sobbed Martin McGuinness, his voice trmbling with wounded feelings.
hehe, RTE would actually fall for that!!
A neat phrase.
It's an insult to Frankenstein...
Somehow I think the latter part of this statement is a bit optimistic - hope I'm wrong.
Well, Co. Mayo overall hates Sinn Fein/IRA, but there are hotbeds of sympathizers here...
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