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On Tuesday in Dáil Éireann, Deputy Ciarán Cuffe said that : the events of the past few days have a dangerous similarity to Senator McCarthy’s witch-hunts in the United States in the 1950s. Demagoguery, arrogance and innuendo were used then to destroy people’s careers and they are being used to the same ends by the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform today. There is a touch of Senator McCarthy about the Minister, Deputy McDowell. The Minister’s actions and allegations have compromised the separation of powers that has underpinned this State since its foundation. He has undermined the Gardaí (police) and the Director of Public Prosecutions and he has failed to clarify today how the interests of the State were or are threatened by an individual. Cuffe said that it is worth remembering that McDowell, who leaked material from a police file to a journalist friend, had introduced amendments to the Garda Síochána Bill 2004 that would jail a garda (Irish police) for up to five years if he or she had put information into the public domain; yet the Minister, through his actions, has politicised the judicial process and undermined democracy in this State. Whatever the aptness of the similarities between McDowell and McCarthy may be, the Kafkaesque circumstances of McDowell's decision, with the support of Government colleagues, to destroy journalist Frank Connolly and the private watchdog, the Centre for Public Inquiry where he works as Executive Director, has parallels with the GUBU period in the 1980's when former Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Charles Haughey dominated Irish political life. Haughey had arranged to have his Minister for Justice place wiretaps on the phones of political opponents and prominent journalists in the guise of national security. It will have surprised many Irish people that we still have the same system where a partisan politician can have access to police files on any citizen, without independent safeguards, who can then use material as he chooses to make devastating one-line charges, in the name of national security. McDowell says that he relies on police information but we must assume, he would have also relied on such information from senior Gardaí from Donegal, before the serious revelations at a public tribunal. Just weeks ago, the Irish State had to apologise in the courts to a member of a family that had been terrorised for more than a decade in the northwest county of Donegal, by renegade members of the Garda Síochána (Irish police). Frank Shortt, a businessman, who was a chartered accountant, was imprisoned for three-and-a-half years, as a result of false claims made by the police in Donegal. McDowell as Judge and Prosecutor McDowell has charged that Connolly has been involved in a massive conspiracy to subvert the security of the State through raising millions of euros from cocaine trafficking in Colombia for the terrorist group, the Provisional Irish Republican Army, to use for political purposes in the Republic of Ireland. He says that Frank Connolly had entered the Farc terrorist-controlled region of Colombia in April 2001, along with his brother, Niall, and a convicted IRA member, Pádraig Wilson. Niall Connolly and two other Irishmen were detained in August 2001 at Bogota's international airport after arriving from a demilitarised zone then controlled by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.
Frank Connolly has denied that he has ever been in Colombia, or travelled there on a false passport. McDowell makes the devastating charge against Connolly even though the independent Director of Public Prosecutions apparently has decided that there is not sufficient evidence to charge Connolly.
Judge Feargus Flood yesterday described the allegations made by McDowell against Frank Connolly as "a drumhead court-martial". Flood is a retired member of Ireland's High Court and is Chairman of the Centre for Public Inquiry (CPI). Judge Flood said that “the minister cannot override the Constitution under any circumstances. The Constitution provides that justice shall be administered in public in court”. McDowell has himself as a client. He told the Dáil that the Constitution provides in Article 40.6.1 that: “The education of public opinion being, however, a matter of such grave import to the common good, the State shall endeavour to ensure that organs of public opinion, such as the radio, the press, the cinema, while preserving their rightful liberty of expression, including criticism of Government policy, shall not be used to undermine public order or morality or the authority of the State”. Undoubtedly, the Centre for Public Inquiry, as a body which sought and obtained multi-million euro charitable funds given with the best of motives to be expended for the public good, aspires to be an organ of public opinion, but equally it is one which, in subversive hands, has the capacity to gravely undermine the authority of the State. Subversion of Democracy and the Centre of Public Inquiry The Centre of Public Inquiry (CPI) think-thank, was established last February and it has the purpose of reporting on issues of public policy and ethics in public and corporate life. Irish-American billionaire philanthropist Charles (Chuck) Feeney's Atlantic Philanthropies had agreed to provide funding of €4 million over five years. The issue of McDowell's charge of subversion against its Executive Director, is not the whole story. Politicians like McDowell disparagingly queried the right of a "self-appointed" body with foreign funding, to inquire into areas of public policy. The CPI had begun probing the €30 million purchase by McDowell's Department of Justice of a site in North Dublin, for a new prison complex. In the mid 1990's, Connolly had broken several stories on public corruption and a tribunal was told that the current Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern, had referred to Connolly as a "dangerous bastard" in 1997, when Taoiseach Bertie Ahern was planning to appoint one of their corrupt colleagues, Ray Burke, as Minister for Foreign Affairs. Connolly had also reported an allegation about Bertie Ahern, which turned out to be false. Bertie Ahern gave McDowell the green light to destroy the CPI. Tánaiste (Deputy Prime Minister) Mary Harney, leader of McDowell's party, the Progressive Democrats, also supported the campaign. She called the CPI "sinister" and raised the issue of "foreign funding." This charge was bizarre as Chuck Feeney has contributed hundreds of millions of dollars for projects in both parts of Ireland. The chairman of the CPI, Judge Flood, had been appointed in 1997, as sole member of a tribunal to investigate planning corruption. McDowell produced documents from a police file on Connolly at a meeting with Feeney. Last week, Atlantic Philanthropies withdrew funding from the CPI. As already noted, Frank Connolly has denied that he has ever been in Colombia. However, given that McDowell has chosen the role of judge, Connolly should be more forthcoming on the claims that have been made. However, Michael McDowell's shabby behaviour cannot be excused. Taoiseach Bertie Ahern said on Thursday, in an echo of Queen Marie Antoinette of France, that an aggrieved citizen like Connolly had a right to sue if he feels he was defamed by the Government - at €100,000-€500,000 per case, with everyone else paying Ministerial costs. GUBU GUBU is an acronym standing for grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre and unprecedented. It was coined by historian and former politician Conor Cruise O'Brien. Charles Haughey had used the words to describe the circumstances of the discovery of a double-murderer in the home of the Irish Attorney General, in 1982. GUBU became a term for the Haughey years of political turmoil when there was widespread concern about the adherence to the rule of law. In 2004, Michael McDowell said: I believe that there is an alternative vision for Ireland. I think that it is a vision that builds on political and economic liberalism. I think that its values can be based on principles of civil republicanism. Michael McDowell chose the role of master and that puts him much closer to Charles Haughey's Ireland, than the vision he espoused. RELATED All the King's Men: The Ireland that Made Charles Haughey Senator Joseph Raymond McCarthy : The Implosion of an Irish American Demagogue © Copyright 2007 by Finfacts.com |
