REFERENDUM BATTLE
CLOSE FOUGHT
TO BITTER END:
The Irish Referendum campaign
on the EU Austerity Treaty is being fought
tooth and nail in the final
days before voting on Thursday. Door to door canvas
will continue until late
evening today in all areas. World media have been arriving
in force since last week
and citizens are likely to be invited to comment for
Japanese or Swiss
television viewers as they go about their business on the
streets of Dublin.
In the past week,
solidarity actions have been taking place outside Irish Embassies
In Rome, Lisbon, Helsinki,
Madrid, The Hague, Vienna and Brussels where
statements were handed in urging Irish people to vote NO on behalf of Europeans
deprived of an opportunity to vote by their own governments in the setting aside of
democracy which characterizes the current EU.
statements were handed in urging Irish people to vote NO on behalf of Europeans
deprived of an opportunity to vote by their own governments in the setting aside of
democracy which characterizes the current EU.
Tuesday
night’s RTÉ “Prime Time” debate on television on the Referendum was a disaster
for the ‘Yes’ side. Clare Daly,TD, Socialist Party and Mary Lou McDonald,TD,
Deputy Leader of Sinn Féin, fresh from a successful Ard-Fheis (annual
conference) in Killarney at the weekend, wiped the floor with the two ‘Yes’
supporters, Joan Burton, TD, Deputy Leader of the Irish Labour Party and Timmy Dooley,
TD, of Fianna Fáil, the previous government party ousted in the 2011 general
election.
Ms
Daly and Ms McDonald pinned down the lies and falsehoods of the ‘Yes’ campaign
with forensic detail and demolished the pathetic attempts of the other two to
defend the contradictory stance
of the pro-Treaty campaigners in wanting to commit the nation to a vicious
austerity regime with
no democratic accountability while mouthing hollow slogans about “growth and
recovery” which can never be provided by such a regime.
Joan
Burton, who is also Minister for Social Protection, looked distinctly uncomfortable
as she tried
to stave off criticism which exposed the glaring contradictions of the government
position and
her own departmental brief which will become practically irrelevant if the Austerity
Treaty is incorporated into Irish law. Mr Dooley, a light-weight in the FF
front bench, with no credibility on economic matters, floundered and blustered
in a welter of redundant clichés showing no knowledge of the matters being
discussed and the absence of any coherent policy by his party, Fianna
Fáil, in the wake of their disastrous government performance 2007-11.
Earlier
today, in the High Court in Dublin, Sinn Féin leaders launched a challenge to
the Referendum Commission’s declaration last week that Ireland could not veto
the setting up of
The
European Stability Mechanism (ESM) the legislation for which comes before Dáil
Éireann after
the referendum. It is important that the voters have correct information before
the poll on Thursday and as explained here yesterday, Dáil Éireann has every
Constitutional right to veto this
proposed legislation.
WHAT THE AUSTERITY TREATY MEANS:
The proposed Treaty on
Stability, Co-ordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union is
in reality a permanent Austerity Treaty. A completely undemocratic attempt to institutionalise austerity across Europe.
Its so-called 'Fiscal Compact' would deny the right of Member State governments
to run a 'structural' budget deficit of more than 0.5%. This would remove the
democratic right of national parliaments to decide national budgets, with that
power shifting to the unelected European Commission and European Court of Justice.
This would be a fundamental transfer of power away from elected governments.
The demand for “balanced
budgets”, and fines of hundreds of millions of euro for countries which breach
EU targets, is an attempt to impose austerity regardless of what government is
elected or what mass movements against austerity develop. This attack on
democratic rights is part of the same process that has seen elected governments
in Greece and Italy replaced by ex-bankers, who represent the interests of the
powerful and wealthy.
The proposed Austerity
Treaty will not revive the economy or reduce unemployment. It would result in a
Europe where millions are out of work for years; where welfare and other
benefits are driven down; where education, health and other essential services
are cut. It would exacerbate the differences between rich and poor, and between
the wealthy core and indebted peripheral countries - shifting the burden of the
crisis onto ordinary people.
The proposed Austerity
Treaty is a means to compel governments to reduce public spending so as to pay
public debt. But public debt has grown because banks have been given €billions
to stop them collapsing or because the rich paid little or no tax – not because
of excessive spending on public services. Yet the banks and financial markets
now insist that governments must become more “credit-worthy”: spending cuts are
demanded - to ensure that the state can pay debts that were taken on to bail
out the banks in the first place.
Cutting public spending on
health, education and welfare will only make the current crisis worse. The
economy is in recession, yet €billions of accumulated profits are not being
invested productively. Instead, money has gone into financial speculation,
which is at the root of the financial crisis and has fuelled the growth of huge
debt on the part of households, businesses and states. Therefore it can be seen
as a clear agenda for the complete dismantling of the welfare state across
Europe by disabling democratic decision making in state parliaments and
enforcing a bureaucratic regime from Brussels which would be unaccountable and uncontrollable
by any democratic means. It wouldn’t matter what government was elected, they
would be unable to alter the legally binding Austerity Treaty and would be
forced to continue with the right-wing neo-liberal ‘necronomics’ policies of
stagnation and public spending cuts which has been the bureaucrats and the
financial elite’s plan all along.
In the past, recession and
a refusal to invest profits were addressed by state investment in public works.
But the Austerity Treaty would prevent states from running deficits to fund
public works; it would further reduce economic demand and risks turning the
current recession into a long-term depression.
The decision on the Austerity
Treaty is about the kind of Europe we want: a Europe for the millions or for
the millionaires. The real issue in a referendum will not be the euro or
membership of the EU. It will be a choice between accepting an EU Austerity
Union, with protection for the wealthy and poverty for ordinary people; or
struggling with others across Europe for a People’s Europe, where the
priorities are democracy and equality, full employment, social protection and
sustainable development.
What has been imposed on Greece is exactly what is
intended for all of
Europe by the league of Liars, Thieves and Traitors who are
FearFeasaMacLéinn
Áth Cliath/Dublin 30 Bealtaine/May 2012.
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