Joe Higgins responds to Fianna Fail & the Evening Herald's Attack

dublin | politics / elections | opinion/analysis Thursday June 04, 2009 16:24 by Joe Higgins - Socialist Party info at joehiggins dot eu

Desperate O'Dea's Attempted Red Scare Shows Fianna Fail Panic in Dublin

The Evening Herald today joined the political establishment in a desperate bid to dig FiannaFail out of an electoral hole in Dublin by publishing a pathetic 'Red Scare' smear against me as the Socialist Party Euro Candidate by Fianna Fail Minister of Defence, Willie O'Dea. Resorting to the most illiterate of political abuse, O'Dea pathetically tries to associate me with the ghost of the monster Stalin to scare Dublin voters, thereby insulting their intelligence.

The Herald is guilty of sharp practice and contemptible and partisan pro Fianna Fail propaganda by publishing lies from both O'Dea and Eoin Ryan without, quite deliberately, having afforded me any opportunity to respond.

We have FF Worried - Now let's wipe them out! Vote Joe Higgins No.1

The political abuse against me by Willie O'Dea, Eoin Ryan and Mary Harney, who is also quoted, is a panic attempt to divert attention away from the hatred for Fianna Fail among most voters in the capital. Quite appropriately, in page 11, right beside this bit of shameless opportunism, is a poster of a Dublin Local Election candidate in search of publicity with only a ukulele covering his nakedness!

Eoin Ryan who is reaching the heights of hysteria to save Fianna Fail in Dublin also accuses me of wanting to 'bankrupt the next three generations of Dublin people.' This is an unfortunate allusion by him since voters in Dublin know exactly how Fianna Fail's attempt to salvage their friends - speculators, big developers and bankers - threatens a millstone around the necks of future generations.

The hard necked Willie's red scare intervention brings to mind his former Leader, Jack Lynch, doing the Reverend Mother Circuit in 1969 to warn them of 'the dangers of communism.' Someone should tell Wille that the unlamented Stalinist system collapsed all of twenty years ago.

Dubliners will find Willie O'Deas intervention into the Dublin Euro campaign as ridiculous as the photographs published a few years ago of him playing with the army's weaponry in the Curragh which prompted me to ask the then Tanaiste Harney the same morning in the Dail, if she would put us at ease in the Chamber by assuring us that she had asked the Minister for Defence if he had left his weapons at the door!

Having doubled unemloyment in Dublin in twelve months, sold out thousands of jobs in SR Technics and Eircom and savaged the incomes of workers to bail out those whose greed crashed the economy, Fianna Fail will need a little more than anachronistic, cold war smears to gain credibility.

(Above Photo by Michael Gallagher, www.myspace.com/libertypix)

RELATED LINKS
Joe Higgins' Final Election Broadcast: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2paLzGtQ8Fg
Joe Higgins' Webiste: http://www.joehiggins.eu
Joe Higgins' Top 10 Issues: http://www.joehiggins.eu/ideas

Article: "Joe Higgins: Our Campaign is Best Placed To Defeat Fianna Fail" http://www.indymedia.ie/article/92580
Previous article on Evening Herald attack on Shell to Sea: http://www.indymedia.ie/article/88770