Republican Councillors Against Lisbon

national | rights, freedoms and repression | news report Thursday September 24, 2009 19:02 by Republican PRO

Seven Republican councillors today added their collective voices to the campaign against the Lisbon Treaty

Pringle, Perry, Dwyer, Swift, Minihan, Monteith

Seven Republican councillors from across Ireland today released a joint statement asking the Twenty-Six County electorate to vote NO on October 2nd. Six of them attended a press conference in Dublin city centre to outline their reasons for coming together and rejecting Lisbon. Below is the text of their joint statement:

Republican Councillors Against Lisbon Joint Statement (September 24, 2009)

We, the undersigned, represent communities across Ireland.

Our collective constituencies in Donegal, Down, Dublin, Fermanagh, Tyrone and Wexford form a broad cross-section of urban and rural Irish society. We have come together to add our combined voice to the campaign to defeat the Lisbon Treaty.

It is our view that the Lisbon Treaty itself and the process by which it is proposed to bring it into effect are deeply anti-democratic. Of the 500 million people living in the EU, just 3 million people in the Twenty-Six counties have been allowed to vote on the Lisbon Treaty.

In the Irish context, this democratic deficit is further exacerbated by the fact that 1.8 million Irish citizens living in the British-occupied Six Counties have been denied a vote on the Lisbon Treaty.

In June 2008, the electorate of the Twenty-Six Counties voted by a substantial majority to reject the Lisbon Treaty. In forcing a second referendum, the Dublin government and the European political establishment have demonstrated their complete contempt for democracy.

We represent communities that are being devastated by the current economic crisis, a crisis which was created by the very same economic policies that are enshrined within the Lisbon Treaty. The administrations in Leinster House and Stormont continue to slavishly follow these failed and discredited neo-liberal policies that have led Ireland into economic ruin.

Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, IBEC and other elements of the Yes camp have cynically and falsely claimed that the Lisbon Treaty will deliver jobs and economic recovery. It will deliver no such thing because the Treaty is about neither jobs nor recovery. Nor is it about ‘our place in Europe’. The Lisbon Treaty is about the usurpation of democracy, the privatisation of public services, the undermining of workers’ rights and the militarization of the EU.

As republicans, we believe in the principle of the sovereignty of the people. This principle provides that the people, not the business or political classes, have control over the democratic process and the economic life of the nation.

Lisbon represents a further erosion of this democratic principle. It can and must be stopped. On 2nd October, we are calling on the people in the Twenty-Six Counties to reaffirm their decision of June last year and to once again vote No to the Lisbon Treaty.

Councillor Martin Connolly (Ind, Down)
Councillor John Dwyer (Ind, Wexford)
Councillor Louise Minihan (éirígí, Dublin)
Councillor Barry Monteith (éirígí, Tyrone)
Councillor Cieran Perry (Ind, Dublin)
Councillor Thomas Pringle (Ind, Donegal)
Councillor Bernice Swift (Ind, Fermanagh)