Decorated former Irish Army Commandant Rips up Green Party Membership Card and Supports Independent

national | politics / elections | news report Wednesday June 03, 2009 18:58 by Edward Horgan and Patricia McKenna pmmckenna at eircom dot net

“Green Party shreds and incinerates its principles to achieve power-at-all-costs”

Edward Horgan Resigns from Green Party
Veteran UN peacekeeper and human rights activist Dr. Edward Horgan was a prominent Green Party member until he resigned and gave his support for the EU elections to independent candidate Patricia McKenna.

Mr Horgan who was a prominent member of the Greens for many years tore up his Green Party membership card during a Green Party press conference saying that the party had not only let their voters down but also members of their own party.

Patricia McKenna stated; “I welcome Edward’s support, he has a great track record on highlighting human rights abuses and I am honoured that he is supporting my campaign.”

The Green Party has abandoned its core principles in order to get into Government, and has pushed out its most principled members, including Patricia McKenna, Bronwen Maher, Chris O’Leary and Betty Doran.

The Green Party, led by John Gormley claimed to be staunch opponents of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and opponents of the abandonment of Irish neutrality at Shannon airport. They have even abandoned the pretence that the programme for Government would impose searches on CIA associated aircraft at Shannon airport.

Not only have no such planes been searched and no investigations carried out on the use of Shannon airport in the US torture rendition programme, but whistle blowers such as Edward Horgan and Conor Cregan have been unjustifiable arrested, charged and spuriously brought before the courts several times for daring to ask the Gardai to investigate the presence of CIA aircraft at Shannon. Both have been repeatedly vindicated by the Irish courts for their whistle blowing actions at Shannon airport.

Who will vindicate those lives lost and those prisoners tortured with the active complicity of the present Irish Government at Shannon airport?
It is now known that about one hundred prisoners have died in US custody since 2001, and that at least thirty of these died as a result of torture. Yet the Green Party in Government have been silent and complicit in these crimes in breach of the UN Convention against Torture, and complicit in the deaths of up to one million people in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I have been very slow to leave the Green Party and have discouraged others from doing so, on the basis that if we did leave, the lack of critical voices within the Green Party would lead to the whole green movement becoming corrupted by their unprincipled quest for power. This has now happened and the Shannon airport and neutrality issues have been final straw.

Ireland needs Patricia McKenna, and others like her, as critical voices in the European Parliament, and as crucial voices in the Dail, and in Local Government.
Ireland needs to end its complicity with crimes against humanity at Shannon airport. We have helped to cause the deaths up to 250,000 children in Iraq and Afghanistan. This scandal is of a greater scale than even the abuses perpetrated against Irish children by the religious orders.
Irish soldiers are now serving abroad with NATO in Afghanistan preventing the Afghan people from expelling their foreign invaders.
The Green Party have betrayed their members, and the Irish people, in a far more serious way that the Dick Spring/Albert Reynolds power at all costs arrangement in 1992.

The Irish electorate punished the Labour Party for several years, but it is recovering. The damage to the Irish green movement by the Green Party’s complicity in the present corrupt Fianna Fail Government is so deep that it may be beyond repair. The electorate should support those former Green party members who are standing by their principles and are now running as independent candidates.

In spite of claims that the Greens in Government are achieving their objectives, the opposite is the case. On the environment, relatively trivial successes on low energy bulbs and organic farming hide the reality of failure to make any substantial progress on alternative energy with Ireland trailing the rest of Europe on wind and solar energy.

The Green party has sold out on Corrib Gas project, sold out on Tara, and sold out on Irish neutrality and US military and CIA use of Shannon Airport. The Greens have bought in to Willie O’Dea’s triple lock on Irish neutrality, and ignored the fact that all these so-called locks have been dumped into the Shannon estuary, as Irish neutrality was abandoned in favour of war profiteering.

The Green Party leadership have effectively incinerated their principles. Perhaps the new incinerator in John Gormley’s constituency can be used to dispose of their unwanted principles.

However, the most serious aspect of Green party betrayal has been in the area of international peace and Irish neutrality.

The Green TDs and Senators have probably made a pact to stay in Government for the next three years to enhance their pensions and their power privileges. The people of Ireland cannot afford another three years of this corrupt and incompetent Fianna Fail /Green Government.