Fine Gael campaign launch:FINE GAEL leader Enda Kenny has urged party supporters to refrain from using the Lisbon referendum to express their opposition to the Government but to "hold their fire" until next year's local and European elections.
Speaking in Dublin yesterday at the formal launch of the party's campaign for a Yes vote, he also called on farming organisations not to use their vote on the Lisbon Treaty as a means of influencing the current world trade talks.
"I am voting Yes for this treaty and I'm asking every Fine Gael supporter throughout the country to vote Yes. I really do believe that Ireland's future success and prosperity depend on this country remaining strongly and centrally at the heart of Europe," Mr Kenny said.
Calling for political differences to be put aside, he said: "Following in the tradition of leaders of the Fine Gael party who went before me, we will put the country first again. We have set aside any differences of national politics with the Government to campaign strongly, openly and publicly for this treaty.
"From that perspective, I have been explaining to our own members throughout the country the reasons that we do this and that if they want to hold their fire, as it were, to vote against the Government, they will have the opportunity in the local elections and the European elections next year.
Commenting on Tánaiste Brian Cowen, Mr Kenny said: "He needs now to step up to the mark and take real leadership responsibility from a Government perspective and lead this campaign, to get the Fianna Fáil voters out." On farmers' voting intentions, he declared: "I say this publicly to the farming organisations. They have made their point very clearly and it is a strong point. But we should not use the Lisbon Treaty to do the business of the World Trade Organisation."
He pointed out that the Government "holds a right of veto at the conclusion of those talks in any event". Asked several times whether he agreed with a statement by Fine Gael European affairs spokeswoman Lucinda Creighton that businessmen Ulick McEvaddy and Declan Ganley were opposing the treaty because of commercial links with the US military establishment, Mr Kenny said: "She's perfectly entitled to raise her questions and they're perfectly entitled to respond and I hope they do."
Fine Gael MEP Gay Mitchell, director of elections for the campaign, said: "We really are going to ensure that we put our backs into this campaign." Pointing out that "sixty million Europeans died in the first half of the last century" he continued: "This whole project is about peace and stability and everything else is a bonus - and what a bonus it has been."
Mr Mitchell said: "We are building a system that has no precedent in political science - and we're doing it without panzer divisions and gas chambers. This is actually quite a miraculous development and those of us who believe in it are going to fight for it, this is not going to be a campaign where we will sit down and let all sorts of spurious people wander on to the political stage and not take the consequences of involving themselves in politics. We have to ask and answer questions, they have to do the same," Mr Mitchell said.
