State of the Union »

• Is Ganley back from the dead?

  September 11, 2009 @ 7:22 pm | by Jamie Smyth

   

  He may be back you know. Declan Ganley, that is. 

   The snappy dressing no to Lisbon campaigner, who made his name running a slick campaign against Lisbon in the first referendum, has given a lengthy interview to the Wall Street Journal.

   He repeats many of the arguments that he made during his failed European election campaign in June and describes the second referendum as a “profoundly undemocratic” exercise to hold a second vote on the treaty.

   But even if you are a closet yes voter you have to admit the businessman-turned-politician-turned-businessman has some good lines.

   “The Irish people had a vote on the Lisbon Treaty. They voted no. A higher percentage of the electorate voted no than voted for Barack Obama in the United States of America. No one’s suggesting he should run for re-election next month,” he told the Journal.

   The big question everyone on everyone’s lips is – is he becoming a politician again and launching a new campaign?  The rumour mill in Dublin suggests Libertas may launch a campaign against the treaty on Sunday, although Ganley may not be leading the group’s campaign.

  Yes campaigners are publicly saying they aren’t worried. But behind the scenes there are real fears that a fired up Ganley could give momentum to a no campaign, which is rather lackluster and has few leaders.

   Sinn Fein seem to be going through the motions by opposing the treaty without committing too many troops on the ground. With a general election possible within the next few months it is unlikely they want to scare off any voters by being too aggressive.

   Socialist MEP Joe Higgins recently got caught misquoting the treaty while the right wing Catholic group Coir has made such exaggerated claims about Lisbon’s impact on the minimum wage that most people are dismissing them as cranks.

  Libertas certainly told a few porky’s first time around- remember Ganley’s claim about the EU locking up 3 year olds- but he is passionate and a fantastic communicator.

    But the real problem standing in the way of a Ganley comeback is his repeated comments to the media that he was bowing out of politics and wouldn’t oppose the referendum following his defeat in the European elections. An u-turn now would raise questions about his integrity. But then again if he is back to being a politician then performing a u-turn will probably be second nature to him.  

• EU elites delight at Libertas defeat

  June 11, 2009 @ 11:09 am | by Jamie Smyth

  Here is a short video clip I’ve been sent from election night at the European parliament. The man doing the talking is Wilfred Martens, president of the European People’s Party (EPP)- basically a big cheese in the biggest European party.

   The EPP are staunch supporters of the Lisbon treaty and therefore bitter enemies of Declan Ganley’s Libertas. I think you’ll get the point from his reaction on live TV to being told that Libertas had not won any seats in the elections.

   There is quite a lot of funny Libertas stuff knocking around on Youtube (but I won’t attach it to this blog for reasons for decency)- got to protect the Irish Time brand.

  But remember Brian Cowen’s famous “Downfall” take off on YouTube- well there is a similar one featuring Ganley, Jens Peter Bonde and a few other Libertas cast members. Do a search and you’ll find it.

   More seriously though the Libertas melt down in the elections probably spells the end for the organisation across
  Europe. I’ve already been tipped off about huge debts being wracked up in member states, which I’m investigating today and may be able to report on later this week in the The Irish Times.        

   I walked past their huge building in Brussels this morning and couldn’t help looking for a “to let” sign. I could be wrong but to I predict a rather bitter unravelling of the whole organisation. Let’s see what happens next….

• Fringe parties may win but Libertas to lose big?

  June 7, 2009 @ 12:24 pm | by Jamie Smyth

   

  In Ireland, Britain, the Netherlands and Latvia the governing parties have taken a hammering in the face of the economic crisis, according to early exit polls.

    Fianna Fail in Ireland and the Labour party in Britain have received their worst ever share of the national vote in local elections. These results will be replicated in the European elections as voters punish the governing parties for their economic mistakes.  

   In Latvia and the Netherlands fringe parties are the big winners. The Dutch far right have triumphed with Geert Widlers taking four seats while in Latvia the far left Harmony Centre party- led by former Latvian communist leader Alfred Rubiks  is set for a big win. Rubiks, who was convicted of treason for attempting a coup against the democratic government in the early 1990s, is on course to claim 20 per cent of the vote. 

  Clearly the economic crisis is the key issue that voters are reacting to in these elections and fringe parties look set to make gains at the expense of the political establishment.  

   These should be perfect conditions for Libertas to make a breakthrough. It is running some 531 candidates in 14 EU countries on an anti-establishment platform and has been claiming that it could scoop up to 100 seats in the 736 seat European parliament.  

   Dream on Declan. I predict the party, which has probably spent euro 30 million on the campaign, could be set for a humiliating defeat in almost every EU state it runs in. In the Netherlands and Latvia its candidates didn’t even show up in the exit polls and instead were lumped into the “other parties” category. In Britain it will struggle against a host of anti-EU parties such as UKIP and NotoEU and polls conducted prior to today’s voting suggested Libertas may claim just a single seat in
  France. But even that result in France would be a major disappointment given that Libertas has teamed up with the Movement for France party, which currently has three sitting MEPs in parliament. Libertas’ failure rests on several factors.

   The whole premise of the party- its opposition to the Lisbon treaty- simply doesn’t turn on European voters, who care more about saving their jobs right now. Ganley also faced a huge challenge in building a political movement from scratch in a myriad of countries where he simply didn’t know the political landscape. Libertas also struggled to present any coherent ideology, for example by advocating a clamp down on immigration in Ireland while supporting open borders in Poland.

   For these reasons I think no matter what happens in the north west constituency today I’d be surprised if Libertas’ pan-European ambition survives this election.

• The nazi hunters pursuit of Libertas

  June 2, 2009 @ 9:11 pm | by Jamie Smyth

   

  As if poor poll results are not enough bad news for Libertas now they have the Simon Wiesenthal Centre on their backs.

  The Jewish human rights group, which is famous for hunting down Nazi war criminals, has written to the EU’s Fundamental Rights Agency asking for it to undertake an investigation on its links with several members of the Polish League of Familes.  

  “Libertas is running some 600 candidates in over 20 of the elections in the 27 member-states. Some of those standing are known antisemites, homophobes and anti-migrant racists,” says the centre in press release today.  

  “These include: Ryszard Bender and Anna Sobecka of the Polish League of Families. Both are supporters of the widely criticized antisemitic Radio Maryja, where Bender was recorded as stating that Auschwitz was “not a death camp but a labour camp where Jews and Gypsies were killed by hard labour – not so hard, not always killed.”

  The centre’s director for international relations Dr Shimon Samuels goes on to name several other Libertas candidates, which it accuses of holding extreme views. He also asks the electorate to use their vote wisely in this week’s election recalling that “in 1933, a potent mix of economic crisis, racism and a leadership vacuum brought Europe – and subsequently the world – to the abyss.”

  The centre addressed its strongly worded letter calling for an EU inquiry to Anastasia Crickley, the chairwoman of the Vienna-based Fundamental Rights Agency.

  I spoke to Crickley – who happens to be Irish – who told me she hadn’t received the letter yet but had been informed that something was on the way.  “This is not the type of investigation that the FRA has the remit to undertake,” she added.   

  The centre’s letter bears all the hallmarks of a public relations coup by Dr Samuels, who is already well known in
  Ireland. Remember the Hunt museum affair? Dr Samuels said the late John and Gertrude Hunt had done business with “notorious dealers in art looted by the Nazis” to stock the Limerick museum. No hard evidence was produced prompting President Mary McAleese to label the allegations as “baseless… unfounded… a tissue of lies”, which had hurt many people.

  The centre may be right that Libertas have teamed up with some unsavoury candidates in Poland but it should also be remembered that not all the claims of Dr Samuels should be accepted at face value. 

• Libertas scores own goal in Poland

  May 18, 2009 @ 2:19 pm | by Jamie Smyth

   

  The Polish media have got wind of Libertas’ plan to stem the tide of Eastern Europeans coming to Ireland to work. The daily newspaper Rzeczpospolita carries a front page story on Libertas’ Caroline Simons’ suggestion that a new “blue card” (visa) system should be introduced to “reduce the burden to Ireland of caring for inhabitants of other member states”.

  Gazeta Wyborcza’s EU correspondent also notes on her blog that Ganley appears to have given up his “rather liberal (free-market I mean) economic outlook”. The policy won’t go down well in Poland where Libertas Poland is campaigning to remove the last remaining restrictions on freedom of movement of workers in Germany and Austria. The restrictions on working abroad (seven years is the maximum allowed under EU rules) introduced by many old member states when the ten new states joined the Union in 2004 has been a constant irritant for relations between old and new Europe. 

  The get tough on immigration policy peddled by Simons and her Libertas colleague Raymond O Malley bears all the hallmarks of Libertas spin doctor Lynton Crosbie, who helped John Howard win four Australian elections by raising fears about asylum seekers.

  Judging by the Irish Times poll last week, which showed Simons on 1 per cent, O’Malley on 3 per cent and Ganley on 9 per cent, Libertas have decided they must plumb the depths of populism to stand any chance of making an impact. But the contradictions in their platform are beginning to stack up.  

  Ganley says he is pro-European yet he cuddles up to the continent’s most prominent eurosceptics. He says he supports the EU’s internal market but then his Irish candidates say they want to stop freedom of movement. He calls on MEPs to publish their expenses yet drags his feet over saying how Libertas is funded.  

  This all begs the question: can we believe anything he says?

  PS Thanks to Mark for tipping me off that Libertas candidate Vladimir Zelezny will continue to stand in the European elections in the Czech Republic despite his conviction for tax evasion last week. He did tender his resignation but it was not accepted by the Libertas council, according to the Czech media.