. The Vilification Of Sinn Féin For Election Time

Kicking the ball off for the vilification of Sinn Féin is Alan Kelly, this week in Ireland at least. A drug addict by his own admission, if you count that he admits being addicted to power, which makes a lot others in the Dáil rather paranoid at this moment in time too for the loss of any addicts favourite drug is a great foster of paranoia. Kelly threw a tantrum that included threats and coarse language against a radio show host last week at his impertinence of allowing the rather unsavoury and corrupt Michael Lowry to upstage him over the airwaves. You are scraping the bottom of the barrel at this point anywhere when you involve Lowry. A week is a long time politics indeed and that seven day period is not over yet as Kelly now tries to martyr himself as a politician under threats from dissidents.

Trevor ó Clochartaigh

The Labour party deputy leader trying to be the ultimate leader at any cost, while doing his best to show a bit of emotion, Alan tells anyone that will listen, and the Irish Independent is all ears for any ill wind against Sinn Féin, over the alleged recent threats to his family that includes him. Of course these threats had to have those same dissidents thrown in, though it is not clear if they provided their own name and addresses and political affiliation to him or the police at this point.  

Not only is Kelly under threat but also “......The lads in the office, post and phone calls,and different other stuff, so it was just an emotional time. I had never faced anything like this before” said an emotionless Alan. Well, if Lowry is anything to go by it will be a sure bet that Alan will get back in power and be the leader of Labour as soon as Burton turns her back a little while not noticing the knife that is parked in the centre of it. I dare say that any ‘dissident’ would want to thread very carefully as well when it comes to an ‘unemotional’ Alan standing over them. Of course the great reporting of this story is by the Irish Independent’s online editors of no names supplied. 

They are not alone as the Daily Mail in England reported only yesterday that the killers that stormed the weigh-in for a couple of boxers in Dublin this week and shot dead one of their gangland rivals “used a gun favoured by the IRA.” The implications were very clear or was it? In case anyone had missed the point, down further on its pages was a piece about a bombing in Manchester at the height of the troubles some twenty years ago and before any peace process had begun in earnest. 

As these few weeks go, many more stories will be trolled out to try and crush Sinn Féin and nothing will be sacrosanct, not that it ever was. Danny Morrison and others will be arrested and charges dropped a day after the elections due to lack evidence for driving cars with bald tyres; Gerry Adams will be brought in for questioning, north or south of the border, for suspected naked trampoline jumping that scared the family dog no end; Trevor O’ Clochartaigh will be brought to assist the police with their enquiries for us to only find out later that it was about an un-licensed bull, and on and on it will escalate until it becomes dangerously silly.  

The real danger for all the other parties is that Gerry Adams and Sinn Féin will actually gain more ground and become the most popular party in the state who says what they mean and mean what they say in their election manifesto, and face the enemy within this state that is the unhinged and unchallenged  corruption that holds it back. And in any language, that will be a first in any state, free or otherwise.

Barry Clifford