Ganley Launches Libertas Campaign

by Brian Kavanagh

There is a passage in George Orwell’s 1984, wherein the reader is told of how children have become the agents of Big Brother and the political elite, how they act as a bulwark against criticism of the establishment, and how they are encouraged to turn their enthusiasm against their fellow man and become adoring mascots of revolution.

The more mischievous witnessed echoes of this on Saturday night, when an army of children clad in canary yellow t-shirts stood at attention to give Declan Ganley a warm, sponsored welcome on the launch of his Libertas local election campaign.

What followed however, was hardly revolutionary. Although reactionary diatribes are fine for the ears of political devotees, there is little doubt that Ganley will find objective audiences less willing to endure forty minutes of rehashed anti-Lisbon Treaty dogma and petulant mud -slinging.

The Libertas supremeo began his speech in true pulpit-thumping form. With his usual mix of passion and incredulity, he waxed lyrical about the wastefulness of government, the meek inefficiency of opposition and the bureaucratic and undemocratic tendencies of the European Union.

Combining the above with a smart jibe about sitting Fine Gael MEP ‘Swimmer’ Jim Higgins, Ganley was on to a winner as far as crowd pleasing was concerned:

 “I have heard Jim Higgins preaching about the Goverment wasting money. Then I see Jim Higgins going to Brussels, when he thinks you aren’t looking, and voting for a €9.2 million plan for a swimming pool for himself and his friends. Well Swimmer Jim will have to answer to the electorate for that.”

For less partisan listeners, this was a shameless indulgence in doublespeak. Higgins support for improved facilities for MEP is perhaps less important than the finding of the Irish Standards in Public Office Report, which was highly critical of and raised questions about the political motivations of Libertas and the nature of its funding.

Remarkable, fter sitting through an emotive and at times jingoistic missive, one’s head swimming with anti-government rhetoric and euro-scepticism, one would be hard pressed to recount one single Libertas policy. Job creation was mentioned. The methodology through which this could be achieved was not.

In the 2004 European Parliament election, just under 127,000 votes out of an electorate of 688,804 were marked for independent candidates. Ganley is clearly lusting after a piece of this Independent pie, and his attack on Higgins is a thinly veiled attempt to siphon off some of his support.

Until Libertas actually formulates a coherent economic and social policy however, its chances of usurping either of these candidates in the forthcoming June elections remain slim in the extreme.

With a painful lack of irony, Ganley closed his speech by paraphrasing Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address (a seminal call to unity for a divided people) pledging to work toward a “Europe by the people, of the people and for the people.”

However, until Libertas establishes which people it represents, conspires to enlist their support and unveils its political raison d’etre, Ganley’s campaign will undoubtedly run aground rather quickly, destined to become, if one must use a Civil War motif, less of a Gettsyburg and more of a Fredericksburg.