Tuesday 12 June 2007

Fall of the Green Party

After playing ping-pong all day today - deal, no deal, deal, no deal - just before the nine o'clock RTE news, the Green Party agreed a final draft of a Programme for Government with Fianna Fáil. They must get a two thirds majority tomorrow afternoon from their members in the Mansion House to ratify the decision of the leadership and negotiating team.

The news will come as a shock to many Green supporters who will look incredulously at a programme that will probably ignore the continued use of Shannon airport by US military to maintain their control of Iraqi oil, the destruction of Tara for a new motorway, the co-location and privatization of hospitals under outgoing Minister Mary Harney, not to speak of the contradictions in the Taoiseach's explanations of receipts of money - which the Greens and PDs had made an election issue.

One re-elected Green TD, Ciaran Cuffe, had written on his own blog that a potential coalition with Fianna Fail was a "deal with the devil".

We have seen unexpected deals in Ireland before. This one, if it happens, will rival the flip-flop of Labour when they returned Fianna Fáil in 1992 after the electorate had given Labour 33 seats believing that in doing so they were getting rid of Fianna Fáil

1 comment:

jmorahan said...

We can only hope that the GP members will vote against this.