Congratulations to the 70% of the Irish who refused to support the Nice Treaty.

Only 48% voted. Of that number 63% voted Yes. Therefore less than 30% of the Irish electorate voted for the Treaty while over 70% refused to support it.

In nearly all democratic countries of the world it is the constitutional requirement for all changes in the Constitution to be approved by two thirds of either the people or the Houses of Parliament.

Only in the increasingly fascist European Union can 15 countries be destroyed
by the vote of tiny majorities of those countries' electorates.

Mimicking the 50 year tactics of European Fascism across all 15 member states of the European Union, the Irish political and corporatist classes trampled Democracy underfoot and removed more critical pillars of Irish Sovereignty while pretending that the Nice Treaty was really about something different - "Enlargement".

Below is an edited statement issued by the Irish "National Platform" on the Nice Treaty vote:

THE RESULT

On a dark day for democracy in Ireland and in Europe, Irish voters succumbed to threats, pressure and bamboozlement by their political class.

THE LIES

Ireland's Yes voters have unknowingly agreed to:

- reduce their democracy further,
- surrender more of their political independence,
- abolish their national veto in 35 policy areas,
- open the way to the division of the EU into two classes or two tiers and
- turn the EU Commission and Commission President into something like an EU Government and Prime Minister, under the effective political control of the Big Member States - all as provided for in the Treaty of Nice.

While they thought they were voting for EU Enlargement!

Last year's No vote held solid in Ireland. For Ireland's No-side campaigners to achieve 37% was quite an achievement in face of:

- a 20 to 1 imbalance in campaign expenditure in favour of the Yes side;
- a trick referendum question that permitted only one answer to two quite different joint
propositions;
- the gutting by the Irish Government of the statutory Referendum Commission in the second Nice referendum as compared with Nice One. This meant that the Nice Treaty Re-run was conducted under radically different campaign rules from last year.

The lessons and experience of Nice One and Nice Two put Ireland's No-side campaigners in a strong position to defeat the Union State Constitution Treaty which is now being prepared for 2004. Ironically, on Thursday last, the Praesidium of the EU Convention, with Ireland's John Bruton present, discussed whether this draft treaty should include a proposal that Member States refusing to ratify it should be required to leave the EU, something that is legally impossible at present, but which Ireland's Yes-side voters have now permitted in principle to happen, by approving the "enhanced cooperation" provisions of the Treaty of Nice.

IRISH FASCIST ELITES (AN OBJECT LESSON IN CORPORATIST METHODS)

The Nice Re-run referendum saw the David of Irish democracy confronting the Goliath of the Irish and EU elites, second time around. David slew Goliath in Nice One, but did not expect to have to face a second bout. In Nice Two Goliath was forewarned against David, was better armed, and had several other Goliaths from among his relations to assist: Ireland's business, trade union and farming elites, who threw themselves into the task of overthrowing the 2001 referendum result with minimal or no consulation with their own members; East European Prime Ministers, ambassadors, Vaclav Havel (whose family lost property after the second world war for collaborating with the Nazis -ed) and Lech Walensa, orchestrated by the Irish Government's Department of Foreign Affairs into pleading for a Yes; the EU Commission and Commissioners intervening on the Yes side, in breach of EU and Irish constitutional law; a print media leaning heavily to the Yes side.

A FASCIST GOVERNMENT CHANGES THE RULES.
BILL RUSHED THROUGH PARLIAMENT WITHOUT PUBLICITY OR PROPER DISCUSSION.

The single most important factor in the success of the Government and its allies in overturning last year's decision of the Irish people on the Nice Treaty, was the change in function of the formerly neutral, statutory Referendum Commission. In Nice One the Commission had the job of informing citizens in a fair and equal manner what the Yes-side and No-side arguments were. It was given substantial public money for that purpose.

To help push through the Nice Re-run, the Government took this function away from the Commission on 14 December last, in a Bill that it put through all four parliamentary readings in one day, with one day's notice to the Opposition, on the eve of the Dail rising for the Christmas holidays, when media and public attention was elsewhere.

MANIPULATION OF THE REFERENDUM COMMISSION

In last year's Nice referendum the Referendum Commission's publicly funded advertisements, had to be evenly balanced between Yes and No. The Government's removal of this Yes/No function from the Referendum Commission cleared a free field for private advertising in the Nice Re-run, as the politicians responsible intended that it would. This advertising was massively in favour of a Yes.

When the Referendum Commission's was given E4m by the Government. - not surprisingly the Commission's material lent heavily to the Yes side. One of the Yes-side campaigning groups had a publicity contract with the same agency as managed the Commission's publicity.

The eurosceptic Irish "National Platform" COMPLAINED that:

Firstly, images convey messages. The Commission sent to every Irish household an image of the EU as an ample mother clutching little flag-waving children to her bosom, representing the existing Member States, and with other flag-waving children - the Applicant countries - gathered around her on the floor waiting to be similarly cuddled, is about as loaded an image of a benevolent EU as one could get. (THIS IS ALMOST EXACTLY THE SAME IMAGE OF "MOTHER EUROPE" USED BY THE FASCISTS IN THE 1930s AND 1940s)

Secondly, The Commission's statement, which lied about the need for the Treaty before expansion could take place. Legally, there is nothing that sets limits to the enlargement of the EU, apart from the requirement of being a European State.

Thirdly, the Commission's radio/TV advertisements informing citizens what the referendum was about mirrored totally uncritically the Government's trick question, which allowed only one answer to two different joined propositions. The Commission made no effort to indicate that the clause of the constitutional amendment requiring a referendum if there were to be an EU defence pact, was in any way less significant than the clauses ratifying the Nice Treaty, with which it was coupled.

Fourthly, the Commission failed in the Nice Re-run to publish the detailed factual descriptive booklets on the Treaty which they sent last year to schools and libraries and provided for enquirers from the general public. Despite its near doubled budget, the Referendum Commission produced much less factually informative material in Nice Two than Nice One, and what it did produce lent subtly towards the Yes.

"In the Nice Treaty Re-run referendum the Irish political class, with honourable exceptions, acted with shameful folly. It is only a matter of time before there is a political reaction amongst the people at the way in which they have been lied to and bullied to overthrow last year's referendum result. New political forces, which surely have the future with them, have advanced further as a result of Nice One and Nice Two."

Anthony Coughlan, The National Platform

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THE WORST EUROFASCISTS IN THE IRISH POLITICAL ESTABLISHMENT

PM Bertie Ahern who spent E10 million buying votes in a rigged referendum, prepared in advance by removing the powers of the referee (The Referendum Commission). Ahern is a fascist worthy of the great "European Union Project"

Former Taoiseach Dr Garret FitzGerald (dutiful Bilderberger) lied about the "enhanced cooperation" provisions of the Treaty of Nice.

Minister for Europe Dick Roche, pushing through the same Nice Treaty which, as a Dail backbencher, he said would be "an affront to democracy";

Foreign Minister Brian Cowen, Dr Brigid Laffan and Pat Cox, abusing his role as speaker of the European Parliament.

- Minister for Justice Michael McDowell:

- RTE (compare BBC): leaning over backwards as usual to please its political masters, while pretending to give balanced coverage to the Nice referendum.

- Irish Times editor Conor Brady, a key influence in encouraging the climate for removing from the Referendum Commission its function of setting out the pros and cons of referendum propositions

- The Irish Congress of Trade Unions deciding to back the overthrow of Nice One without any consultation with ordinary trade union members. The pleasure of learning that the Dublin Regional Council of its biggest affiliate, SIPTU, which did have a proper discussion with its members, coming out on the No-side; - The sense that half a dozen leading lights in IBEC, ICTU, the IFA etc., (many represented on the EU Economic and Social Committee in Brussels) have become ideological missionaries for euro-federalism and get ever more alienated from their own members and constituents in the process.