From: Anthony Coughlan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 17:28:52 +0100 To: Recipient List Suppressed: ; Subject: IRISH PRIME MINISTER BERTIE AHERN EMBARRASSED AT IRISH PEOPLE'S "BAD MISTAKE" PRESS STATEMENT FROM THE NATIONAL PLATFORM, Dublin, Ireland Thursday 26 July 2001 "Mr Ahern said he believed there must be another referendum (on Nice) and repeated his view that voters had made a bad mistake by rejecting it. The Taoiseach said Ireland had lost valuable trust it had been building with the 12 Applicant states, mainly in the old East Bloc. 'I personally have put a lot of effort into the Applicant countries building up their trust. That is damaged - there is no doubt about that. We have to try to re-build that trust and the only way we'll do that is by ratifying the Nice Treaty.'" - The Irish Examiner,25 July 2001,page 2 (INFORMATION NOTE: The main Irish oppposition party ,Fine Gael,stated yesterday that it had decided not to take part in the Irish Governemnt's proposed Forum on Europe. It said that the Government's proposals for this Forum indicated that it was to be a talking shop that would continue to deliberate for the next three years. What Fine Gael wants is a three-month-long consideration of what the Irish Government and main Opposition parties should do about holding a second Nice referendum in the Republic of Ireland. The Fine Gael Party seems to have grasped the fact that the Government's plan to present exactly the same Nice Treaty to the Irish peolpe to vote on again in a year's time may well not work,and would be regarded as insulting by many voters. A General Election has to be held in the Republic by next June and now looks likely to occur in early 2002. It will be left to a new Irish Governemnt to deal with a possible second Nice referendum to attempt to overturn the result of the first, in an exercise in EU democracy, Irish style.) ____________ Il Duce, Bertie Ahern, speaking from his palatial hotel in Brazil last Tuesday, said that his Irish people had "made a bad mistake by rejecting the Nice Treaty". However he has promised that they will not do so again and that, although he is embarrassed, as he says himself, by this democratic decision he will make sure the Irish electorate vote the right way next time. According to Il Duce Ahern, we should all hang our heads in shame at the Nice outcome, beg the pardon of Brussels and promise to try to do better in the future. The Irish Taoiseach must surely be blind or blinded if he can see no contradiction between the high ideals and proud future which the person whose picture he hangs on the wall of his office in Government Buildings,the patriot Padraig Pearse, wished for the Irish people, and his own lack of realization that he has been elected by the people to represent their wishes, not his own, nor those of his Brussels masters. Bertie Ahern has profoundly insulted the Irish people and demeaned the Irish Constitution by failing to respect the Nice Treaty referendum result and informing Ireland's EU partners that the Republic could not ratify the Treaty as a consequence.If he had done his constitutional duty by telling them that, the other EU States would then have had no alternative but to abandon the ratification process and negotiate a new Treaty. Instead the Irish Prime Minister is conniving with them to push through exactly the same Nice Treaty this time next year, after a general election, using the fact that the other EU States have ratified it by then as a device to bully, browbeat and blackmail Irish voters into doing what he and they want. It behoves all Irish democrats to ensure that in the intervening General Election Il Duce Ahern will be challenged on whether he respects democracy and accepts the Irish people's decision on Nice, even if he regards it as a "bad mistake." ____________ Issued by The National Platform 24 Crawford Ave. Dublin 9 Tel: 8305792 Web-site: www.nationalplatform.org Affiliated to TEAM, The European Alliance of EU-critical movements For a free daily news service on EU affairs,consult EUobserver on the internet. _________________________________________________ KOMINFORM P.O. Box 66 00841 Helsinki Phone +358-40-7177941 Fax +358-9-7591081 http://www.kominf.pp.fi General class struggle news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe mails to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Geopolitical news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] __________________________________________________
