Libertas have started spending Ganley cash in Ireland on a billboard advertisement that seems to imply that the leaders of the three biggest Irish political parties, Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and Labour are somehow engaged in cronyism. The ad makes no sense to Irish voters as Fine Gael and Fianna Fail have been traditional enemies going back to their foundations. The premise of the ad seems to be that a moment of shared humour between the leaders indicates a sinister agenda of collusion.
This ad will make no sense to any Irish person especially as the antagonism between the Fianna Fail and Fine Gael parties can be traced back to the 1891 split in the Irish Parliamentary Party known as The Parnell Split. This split informed the writings of James Joyce.
In 1922 the antecedent of both Fianna Fail and Fine Gael formed out of the split that occurred in the Sinn Fein party following the Dail vote on the Anglo Irish Treaty which was agreed after the Irish War of Independence. The pro-treaty faction formed a government and the Cumann na nGael party which became Fine Gael in 1930s Fianna Fail founded in 1926. In the 1930s elements of Fine Gael formed the Blue Shirts and the parties have been either the main opposition or main government parties respectively in various administrations since the 1930s.
However such disingenuous advertisements seem imply that a one part state under Libertas would be preferable to a vibrant democratic divide.
All is not without hope however. An Eu wide poll shows that Libertas will get only one seat in the entire EU. Predict 09, compiled by researchers from London School of Economics and Trinity College Dublin, suggests that Libertas will pick up a single seat in France – through a pact with Movement for France (MPF) – and possibly one MEP in Finland, if it is able to agree a pact with the True Finns.
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“Libertas’s campaign doesn’t seem to be working because it is the only party focusing on European issues through a Europe-wide campaign. But people still vote on national issues in the European elections,” said Prof Simon Hix of the London School of Economics. “They are not doing well . . . it is very hard to make it a Europe-wide election in the way Ganley is trying to do.
Ironically the Movement for France (MPF) had MEPs before the acceptance by MPF leader Phillipe de Villiers of an alliance with Libertas in order to gain money from Ganley's Libertas led to a split in the party.
de Villiers is expected to hold his seat in the ultra conservative Vendée the hold out of counter revolutionary aristocrats following the French revolution. The area was the centre of a Catholic counter revolutionary revolt.
Ironically he would have most likely held his seat without the splitting his party in pursuit of Ganley cash.
Further irony is the fact that Libertas's only seat will go to this aristocrat whose followers believe that the aristocracy were appointed in the Middle Ages to rule by divine right.
Not bad for a party that claims to represent democracy and transparency and an end to elites.
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