Sunday 17th May
The big launch!
Campaigns launches are of course big media events and planned in great detail and I guess sometimes the detail of what a party stands for and what its policies are can be lost in the camera flashes and the media can just pick on one detail or one comment and build their whole presentation around that. I think it's important therefore to reiterate what platform you're standing on and why and what makes you different.
I haven't followed any other party launches too closely but I know of at least one way in which the Sinn Féin team launch was different- we're the only ones presenting an all-Ireland team to the electorate. In a way, the European election is the closest thing we have to an all-Ireland election. Irish people from all thirty-two counties can vote for politicians to represent them in the same parliament; that's unique in Ireland but yet only Sinn Féin can manage to field serious candidates in every constituency!
My party's campaign in different in other ways too. We have laid out an ambitious platform in which we have put the interest of the Irish people first and unashamedly so. This means opposing any re-run of the rejected and outdated Lisbon treaty, it means promoting real democratic change in Europe and it means standing up for Ireland's economic sovereignty so that we can take the necessary measures at home to improve our economy.
I wonder how some Irish MEPs can canvass for support in an EU election less than a year after the Irish people strongly rejected the Lisbon Treaty and lecture us on how the EU and other MEPs are right to carry on planning the implementation of the Treaty. You can be sure that all Sinn Féin candidates elected will play no part in the charade currently going on in which our own government, other EU governments and the EU Parliament pretend that we never voted!
Another thing that strikes me as being different is the emphasis some parties are putting on their "European political party". You know when you vote for me you are voting for a Sinn Féin candidate and only a Sinn Féin one. Other parties may be happy to take their orders from the PES or EPP or whatever acronym they attached themselves to but for my part I will approach every vote and every issue with the interests of the Irish people as the deciding factor in how I vote, not the interests of the Brussels office of any "European political party". I'm sure on the really big issues the interests of working people across Europe are the same but sometimes an Irish approach is needed to ensure our interests are protected. I can guarantee that I won't shirk from voting for Ireland when necessary, can they?
Well, that's just some of the differences that may get lost in the heat of the campaign but Sinn Féin won't forget about them when we're elected!