Anthony McIntyre ☠ As the presidential campaign enters its final days Fine Gael has stepped up its attacks on the candidate whose values it abhors.
That Catherine Connolly is streets ahead in the opinion polls is causing deep unease for those who arrogantly felt a sense of entitlement which would result in one of the establishment candidates cantering home. If Tweedledee didn't make the Aras then Tweedle transfers would ensure that Tweedledum would be resident in Phoenix Park for the next seven years. Faced with the seeming upending of that prospect, with an apparent once easy stroll now a desperate race of catch up - and trip up the person in front - the fangs have sought to penetrate the neck of Catherine Connolly and drag her down.
Fine Gael, which has long operated as a society of friends to bankers, vulture funds and big business has suddenly discovered a moral compass when it comes to the legal profession. After years of allowing vulture companies to feast on the housing market and bankers to profiteer, Fine Gael has suddenly decided that the very people it has licenced to leech are not worthy of legal representation in courts. Furthermore any barrister or solicitor who provides a service of legal representation is now to be smeared as holding the same views as the client on whose behalf they appear in court.
The Belfast lawyer, Pat Finucane was subject to this very smear. He faced accusations in the UK parliament from the British equivalent of Fine Gael - the Tory Party - of being a fellow traveller of the people he represented. It resulted in his assassination at the hands of the UDA-RUC Special Branch.
Imagine the sort of society that would exist in this part of the world if barristers like former attorney general John Rogers were to be shamed by politicians into refusing to appear in court on behalf of John Gilligan; if Conor McGregor was left to represent himself because lawyers fearful of being smeared as sympathetic to rape were to balk at offering legal counsel.
To use the language of Heather Humphreys, who conveniently forgot the driving force of capitalism, all these legal professionals would be open to the charge of capitalising on somebody’s misfortune.
Catherine Connolly is right to characterise the Humphreys slur as a new low.
Fine Gael's Barry Ward, who works as a criminal defence barrister was more measured but no more convincing when he suggested that Catherine Connolly:
doesn’t have to declare exactly whom she appeared for but to stand up in the Dáil and suggest that banks are behaving in a criminal way, having been one of their agents, without saying that you were one of their agents, I think is ethically grey.
It is no more ethically grey than Barry Ward standing up in the Dail to condemn organised crime while having acted as a barrister on behalf of people convicted for organising crime.
The Fianna Fail Justice minister Jim O’Callaghan in dismissing the criticism of Connolly as unfair asserted that it is:
absolutely essential for the administration of justice that all parties in either civil or criminal proceedings are fully and competently represented . . . Just because a lawyer takes on a case for a client doesn't mean that the lawyer is endorsing the behaviour or opinions of that client. They're simply providing legal services . . . I think it's important that we all realise that for the administration of justice to operate effectively in Ireland, there has to be parties represented by lawyers, no matter how unpopular or how unvirtuous those clients may be.
Fine Gael which has long trumpeted its law and order ethos only now to find itself openly mocking the legal representation that the law has designated an imperative for justice, is guilty of the very hypocrisy it seeks to hurl in the face of Catherine Connolly. It is a party not considered by the electorate as fit for government on its own. If the opinion polls are correct that very electorate on Friday seems destined to reject a candidate from the same party on the grounds that she is equally unfit for the presidency.
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The transfers were, for a short time, causing me a little concern Anthony. I anticipate no further concerns in this direction. The "friends of bankers, vulture funds, and big business" stands testimony the 'fascist Blue Shirt' elements within Fine Gael are alive and kicking even to the point, in true dictatorial fashion, of ignoring the presumption of innocence in law!
ReplyDeleteCaoimhin O'Muraile