Re: National Platform letter to various No to Nice campaigners

national | miscellaneous | news report Thursday December 26, 2002 01:00 by Anthony Coughlan - National Platform nationalplatform at eircom dot net 24 Crawford Avenue, Dublin 9 01 - 8305792

Re: National Platform letter to various No to Nice campaigners

THE NATIONAL PLATFORM 24 Crawford Avenue Dublin 9 Tel.: 01 - 8305792 Web-site: www.nationalplatform.org E-mail: [email protected] Saturday 21 December 2002 Dear Friends, On behalf of the National Platform, my colleagues and I would like to thank you for your efforts to defend Ireland's national independence and democracy in last October's Nice referendum. Despite the Government's change to the referendum rules and the trick referendum question, nearly two-fifths of Irish voters still voted No. In Nice Two the total No vote was slightly up on the first Nice referendum. The Yes-side won however because of the increased turnout, which was mostly Yes, although probably a 'soft' Yes. Below for your information is a summary of the reasons why the National Platform believes the result was as it was. The EU is now planning an EU Constitution, which will override the Irish Constitution. This will effectively turn the Republic of Ireland of which

THE NATIONAL PLATFORM
24 Crawford Avenue
Dublin 9

Tel.: 01 - 8305792
Web-site: www.nationalplatform.org
E-mail: [email protected]

Saturday 21 December 2002

Dear Friends,
On behalf of the National Platform, my colleagues and I would like to
thank
you for your efforts to defend Ireland's national independence and
democracy
in
last October's Nice referendum.

Despite the Government's change to the referendum rules and the trick
referendum question, nearly two-fifths of Irish voters still voted No.
In
Nice Two the total No vote was slightly up on the first Nice
referendum.
The Yes-side won however because of the increased turnout, which was
mostly
Yes, although probably a 'soft' Yes. Below for your information is a
summary of the reasons why the National Platform believes the result
was as
it was.

The EU is now planning an EU Constitution, which will override the
Irish
Constitution. This will effectively turn the Republic of Ireland of
which
we are citizens into a province of a Federal EU State, with virtually
no
national democracy or independence left. The first article of the
proposed
Constitution explicitly uses the word 'federal,' a term that only
refers to
a State. It should be clear to all reasonable people by now that this
is
what the EU is about: establishing a European Superstate under the
leadership of the Big States, especially France and Germany. This
Constitutional Treaty/Constitution will be put before us in a
referendum in
2004.

My colleagues and I would like you to write to us to tell us what
steps
you think could be taken to prevent this EU Constitution being imposed
on
us? What do you think needs to be done to defend such national
democracy>as
we have left in the EU, or to regain what the Irish people have already
lost or surrendered? What realistic role do you think the National
Platform might be able to play in that task? We are essentially a
modestly
endowed research and information group on EU affairs, and would like to
disseminate our material more widely to the growing number of Irish
democrats
who believe that the EU as it stands is on a fundamentally misguided
and
undemocratic course.

We also need money, to finance critical material on the EU and its
assault
on democracy and to help rally people against it. We have spent what
resources we had in the two Nice referendums, and if you think our
continued work merits supporting, any donation that you might be able
to
send us would be much appreciated and be used to finance EU-critical
material to send to you.

But above all, we need your feedback and opinions on the questions put
in
the preceding paragraph. Maybe you would think about them over
Christmas,
and write to or e-mail us with your views early in the New Year?

Yours sincerely

Anthony Coughlan
Secretary

P.S. In two separate e-mails following this one we send you a copy of a
criticism of Giscard d'Estaing's outline draft EU Treaty, which is the
basis of what is being discussed in the EU Convention on the Future of
Europe, that will conclude its business next summer. Some of the
proposals
in this draft EU Constitution are likely to surprise you. The criticism
amounts to some twelve A-4 pages. Rather than send it as an e-mail
attachment, which many people may be averse to opening through fear of
viruses, we send it in two parts as simple e-mail text. The two e-mails
will however still be quite long and may be truncated for some
recipients.
Our apologies for that if it happens. If you let us know your postal
address,we should be happy to send you a proper top copy.

________________________

IRELAND'S NICE TWO REFERENDUM . . . WHY THE YES-SIDE WON

(National Platform statement, December 2002)

There were two big differences between Ireland's Nice Two referendum on
19
October last and its Nice One referendum in June 2002, which the
No-side
won.

The first big change was that this year there was no public money
behind
the No-side arguments, because of the Government's removal of that
function
from the neutral statutory Referendum Commission. The Referendum
Commission had been given large sums of public money in Nice One to put
the
Yes-side and No-side cases.

That particularly helped the No-side, as they do not have big monied
interests behind them. Also, the fact that there was public money
behind
the Yes and No arguments last year meant that private interests did not
bother advertising on that occasion.

On 19 October by contrast the removal of this Yes/No-argument function
from
the Referendum Commission cleared a free field for private advertising.
This was in a ratio of approximately 15 to 1 for the Yes side. Thus for
example the Yes-side posters were put up by private companies that were
paid an average of five euros per poster, whereas the No-side depended
on
volunteer postering. Press advertising was overwhelmingly for Yes.

The second big change was that in October the Government put a trick
question to voters. There was an extra clause in the contitutional
amendment in Nice Two compared with Nice One, stating that Ireland
could
not join an EU defence pact without a referendum. This had nothing to
do
with Nice as such and was legally irrelevant to the Treaty's
ratification,
but it was stuck in with the clauses ratifying the treaty and could not
be
voted on separately.

So there were two separate joined proposals, one ratifying Nice and the
other protecting against an EU defence pact, but voters had only one
vote
and had to say Yes or No to both together.

This trick question in Nice Two meant that the Referendum Commission's
remaining function, to inform citizens what the referendum was about -
for
which it was given 4 million euros to spend, double last year's budget
-
was inherently confusing and biased to the Yes side.

These changes to the referendum rules enabled the Irish Government and
its
allies to impose their campaign agenda in Nice Two. They succeeded in
representing the referendum as a vote for "Jobs and Growth," "EU
Enlargement," and "Putting Neutrality into the Irish Constitution" -
all
desirable things in the eyes of Irish voters, on whichever side, but in
no
way dependent on the Treaty of Nice.

The Yes-side's success in imposing its agenda in the last two weeks of
the
referendum campaign was helped by appeals for a Yes vote from the 10
Prime
Ministers of the EU Applicant countries, by the likes of Vaclav Havel
and
Lech Walesa making similar appeals, by the ambassadors of the Applicant
countries writing a Yes-side letter to the newspapers, by the Czech
and
Polish ambassadors actively campaigning for a Yes, and by the Irish
Catholic Hierarchy positively supporting the Yes side, which they had
never
done in any previous EU-related referendum.

Were it not for these changes to the referendum rules, the No side
could
have won the Nice Two referendum. As it was, the 37% No vote -
slightly up
in absolute figures on last year's No - was a very creditable vote in
the>circumstances.

The way was cleared for ratifying Nice because the higher turnout in
the
second referendum favoured the Yes, but on the whole it was a "soft"
Yes.
The strong No vote remains as a strong block to oppose the EU State
Constitution whose imposition on us is now being prepared for 2004.

-end-