Fianna Fail extremist Brendan O’Connor, writing in last Sunday’s Independent, issued the following hilarious warning:
“If Bertie Ahern is effectively hounded out of office anytime soon, just let me warn you now that the country is going to feel a massive sense of collective shame and regret.”
This piece of idiocy was immediately followed by an even more hilarious mafia style threat:
“And when the hangover kicks in we will look for people to blame. And it won’t be Bertie’s own loyal backbenchers or Brian Cowan. Maybe Enda Kenny and Frank Connolly should organise to be out of the country that week.”
O’Connor is right in one respect; Fianna Fail is a family. He writes about the great tradition of loyalty to the leader, about the (Fianna Fail) family putting on a united face.
Brian Cowen, speaking recently in defence of Bertie the ‘ward boss’ said that loyalty (to the leader/party) was the greatest virtue.
Mary Hanafin, speaking on Today FM last Sunday spoke passionately about how members of the ‘family’ look after each other, how loyal they were to the party. A panel member remarked that it sounded like she was talking about the Sopranos. And of course that’s exactly what Fianna Fail is; a mafia.
Public Affairs Consultant, Peter White was in no doubt when he spoke on the Marian Finucane Show last Sunday.
“There’s only one human quality that Fianna Fail espouses and that’s loyalty to the brotherhood, the party and there’s only one other organisation in Europe that has the same approach – The Mafia.
Honour among thieves
Maybe the Nazi party too
That’s not true really: what about the attempted expulsion of Charlie Haughey led by Maire Geoghegan Quinn, Noel Treacy etc? What about former member Dessie O’Malley’s stance against Haugheyism in the party? What about former Dublin lord mayor and former MEP candidate Royston Brady’s criticism of Bertie’s financial affairs weeks ago? What about Education minister Mary Hannafin’s description last Sunday of the B/T account money being used to pay for a house for Celia Larkin as ‘strange and usual’?
FF aren’t a mafia, they’re a party with an elderly membership who primarily inherited their party support from their parents as far back as the 1950s and 1960s. That causes a sort of inertia in terms of accounability and has led to the absence of any significant grassroots pressure on leaders to account to the party, which has solidified the power of the parliamentary party.