By Mike Bray
Anti-Lisbon Treaty group and now officially registered political party, Libertas, feel that they can win over one hundred seats in the upcoming European Parliament elections. The party, which was formed last year in Ireland before the Lisbon Treaty referendum, and which is led by Galway based Declan Ganley, are running over three hundred candidates across almost every EU Member State.
The Party is running three candidates in Ireland including party leader Declan Ganley in the North West, Caroline Simons in Dublin, and former Vice-President of the Irish Farmer's Association, Raymond O’Malley, in the East. Libertas have already faced bad press in rumours that they paid candidates to run for the party and also when the Irish media got a bit excited when they found out that Libertas are running a candidate in Holland who is pro-abortion, or rather, the correctly termed, pro-choice.
When you consider that some people see Libertas as a one issue party, and with recent polls on the Lisbon Treaty showing that sixty seven percent of Irish people will vote ‘Yes’ when they vote on the treaty again, it is hard to see much future for the party. The same Sunday Business Post poll is also showing Libertas polling at only two percent. However, the party claim that they are doing much stronger in their own private research. “The two percent rating…doesn’t tie with a private poll we have done ourselves” Libertas' Raymond O’Malley told Rachael English on The Late Debate on RTÉ Radio One during a debate with the East candidates earlier this week.
On the Libertas website there is a neat calculation feature where you can enter the number of seats you think the party you will vote for will win and it works out the figure in percentage terms and shows the area of seats that party will cover in the Brussels or Strasburg parliaments if your predication is right. Also in this feature Libertas claim “with a vote for Libertas you can win 785 seats” i.e. 100% of the seats. This goal is obviously not possibly in June and is an unthinkable predication but it is an interest feature on their official website. (http://www.libertas.eu/)
“In Libertas we are running over three hundred candidates, it’s the first time this ever happened in Europe, we have a Pan-European Party under one leader, right across Europe we are running over three hundred candidates, now of course we won’t expect to get them all elected, we’ll certainly get a huge quantity of them elected” said O’Malley on The Late Debate. Then when presenter Rachael English asked O’Malley “How many do you think you’ll get elected?” there was a stunned silence for a few seconds in the RTÉ studio after O’Malley replied “We will expect to get a minimum of a hundred elected”.
It’s very hard to see where those one hundred seats are going to come from, considering that party leader Mr Ganley seems to be the only Libertas candidate with a realistic shot at a seat in their motherland here in Ireland, if you go by polls and the bookies. However Libertas think they are being seriously underrated and that they will poll strongly all across Europe between June 4th and 7th.
Anti-Lisbon Treaty group and now officially registered political party, Libertas, feel that they can win over one hundred seats in the upcoming European Parliament elections. The party, which was formed last year in Ireland before the Lisbon Treaty referendum, and which is led by Galway based Declan Ganley, are running over three hundred candidates across almost every EU Member State.
The Party is running three candidates in Ireland including party leader Declan Ganley in the North West, Caroline Simons in Dublin, and former Vice-President of the Irish Farmer's Association, Raymond O’Malley, in the East. Libertas have already faced bad press in rumours that they paid candidates to run for the party and also when the Irish media got a bit excited when they found out that Libertas are running a candidate in Holland who is pro-abortion, or rather, the correctly termed, pro-choice.
When you consider that some people see Libertas as a one issue party, and with recent polls on the Lisbon Treaty showing that sixty seven percent of Irish people will vote ‘Yes’ when they vote on the treaty again, it is hard to see much future for the party. The same Sunday Business Post poll is also showing Libertas polling at only two percent. However, the party claim that they are doing much stronger in their own private research. “The two percent rating…doesn’t tie with a private poll we have done ourselves” Libertas' Raymond O’Malley told Rachael English on The Late Debate on RTÉ Radio One during a debate with the East candidates earlier this week.
On the Libertas website there is a neat calculation feature where you can enter the number of seats you think the party you will vote for will win and it works out the figure in percentage terms and shows the area of seats that party will cover in the Brussels or Strasburg parliaments if your predication is right. Also in this feature Libertas claim “with a vote for Libertas you can win 785 seats” i.e. 100% of the seats. This goal is obviously not possibly in June and is an unthinkable predication but it is an interest feature on their official website. (http://www.libertas.eu/)
“In Libertas we are running over three hundred candidates, it’s the first time this ever happened in Europe, we have a Pan-European Party under one leader, right across Europe we are running over three hundred candidates, now of course we won’t expect to get them all elected, we’ll certainly get a huge quantity of them elected” said O’Malley on The Late Debate. Then when presenter Rachael English asked O’Malley “How many do you think you’ll get elected?” there was a stunned silence for a few seconds in the RTÉ studio after O’Malley replied “We will expect to get a minimum of a hundred elected”.
It’s very hard to see where those one hundred seats are going to come from, considering that party leader Mr Ganley seems to be the only Libertas candidate with a realistic shot at a seat in their motherland here in Ireland, if you go by polls and the bookies. However Libertas think they are being seriously underrated and that they will poll strongly all across Europe between June 4th and 7th.
