The Lisbon Treaty Referendum - Irish Results & Reaction
At the second time of asking, the Lisbon Treaty was ratified by the Irish electorate. Out of a turnout of 59%, just over 67% of voters ticked the yes box, and now the wheels are in motion for a European super-state. Many are saying that this was a landslide result, but we must take the current economic crisis in Ireland into account, aswell as the scaremongering of the yes camp, through threats of an uncertain economic future for the country if the treaty was not passed. This is how they brought the public around to some degree. What must also be remembered is that only 1.2 million out of a total of 3.1 million voters in Ireland made an effort to vote for this treaty, and that even with the entire Irish ruling class and media on the yes side, 600,000 still turned out to vote no, and many more decided to stay away.
October.04.2009 - Robert Knight, Blatant News Correspondent
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THE 2009 IRISH LISBON TREATY REFERENDUM RESULTS
Out of a total of 3,132,475 voters on the electoral register in Ireland, 1,816,098 registered a vote. This was a turnout of 59%, which sits a little above acceptable, but well below any major sign of endorsement in my opinion. The official count puts the yes camp on 1,214,268, with the no's on 594,606 along with 7,224 spoilt votes. This breaks down to 67.13% for the yes side, with the no camp on 32.87%, and while this final figure looks impressive for the yes campaign, it fails to highlight the imbalance in the political and media support for the yes camp, as compared to the no side. You would really have needed to be in Ireland over the past couple of months to understand how all of the main politicians, political parties, industrialists, corporations, sports stars and even celebrity's have been banging the yes drum, with an almost robotic beat. They all said the same things, and none offered any real insight into the treaty itself, and what it could mean to Ireland and Europe in the long-term. They only had one message; if we don't pass the Lisbon Treaty this time around, Ireland will be the subjected to some form of Armageddon-styled future.
THE REACTION IN IRELAND
What reaction? There will be none of note. You will of course get all the politicians on the yes side - all of the main political parties except for Sinn Fein - bellowing out the rhetoric, telling everybody what a great victory they have each commanded, and Sinn Fein along with the rest of the 'No To Lisbon' side have already started their information flow, telling us how our decision will reverberate negatively, but in general this will be swept under the carpet by the Irish public, and the mostly biased media too. Most of us know - both yes and no voters - that there is something suspicious about this piece of legislation, and we feel that we were in some way forced into passing it, by some form of mistruths, but that we really needed to pass it due to our economic situation. This painful double-referendum will be swiftly consciously forgotten, but there will be a memory of it there, lingering, and it may resurface when the repercussions of passing the Lisbon Treaty begin to become apparent on our little island. It would have been much better for a 'good' Europe to have this treaty passed by an electorate which did not feel that a gun was pointed at it's head. Is this the best mood to put a section of your public into, just to get legislation passed which nobody seems capable of explaining to the voters? The all-encompassing Europe which this referendum was supposed to set-up, has infact been lost in this treaty.
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