A colony again — a dominion of the EU
Our own Government was treating us like mindless idiots, blatantly lying to our faces about the momentous events unfolding around us as we caught snatches of the truth via the international news feeds.
The national tragi-farce was triggered as minister after minister went on the domestic airwaves to deny any pressure from the EU for a bailout and certainly no ongoing negotiations.
Respected global news services like the BBC and guardian.com were denounced as enemies of the state for pumping out stories: “It’s When Not If Dublin Does A Deal”, and: “Ireland On The Brink Of Financial Collapse.”
But the wall of unreality the Government was trying to uphold to cover its frantic communications with the European Central Bank was tumbling under the weight of the truth.
And while the fall of the Berlin Wall was a moment of hope and liberation, the collapse of our economic sovereignty was one of despair and subjugation.
Justice Minister Dermot Ahern became an unlikely peacetime pastiche of Iraq’s notorious war-time propaganda minister, Comical Ali, who went on live TV to strenuously deny Baghdad was under attack — even as the American Tomahawk cruise missiles smashed down on the doomed city behind him.
Mr Ahern, or Dodgy Dermo as he should probably now be known, insisted talk of talks with the EU over a bailout was “fiction”. He and fellow minister Noel Dempsey then repeated the ridiculous denial the next day in a routine reminiscent of a head-shaking, slapstick comedy duo. They insist they were telling the truth. Maybe they just weren’t in the loop.
Radio Free Europe was smashing through the jamming devices delusional Dublin was trying to hold in place as key ECB figures made it clear talks were ongoing about an Irish bailout and the EU was most certainly not going to take no for an answer.
The Portuguese warned “contagion” from the Irish banking bailout crisis could trigger financial chaos and force Lisbon to seek emergency funding along the lines of Greece.
The money markets that sent Ireland’s credit ratings to new lows and its borrowing costs to new heights thus forcing Dublin out of the market were now using Ireland’s experience as a reason to target other nations in trouble as it looked like the blanket guarantee bank bailout of September 2008 not only threatened to consume the Irish economy but take the whole eurozone with it as well — unless the EU put a floor under the runaway Republic.
And if the euro went under then so did the entire EU project, according to the bloc’s president Herman Van Rompuy.
The giants of the continent were not going to let a pygmy government on the periphery which represented just 1% of the union’s population put the prosperity of the other 99% at stake.
Yet, still Fianna Fáil fiddled with the truth while Rome and other capitals burned with rage.
The Taoiseach was finally smoked out into the open and gave a shaky performance from a corridor in Government Buildings in which he was asked if we should be worried and instead of simply saying “No,” he rambled on for several minutes, the nation growing more scared with every economic cliche that fell from his lips.
Mr Cowen was trying to shape-shift the situation, now insisting that, of course dialogue was constant with the EU, but it was not because of any Irish banking crisis, oh no, it was because we were all trying to do our bit to stabilise the eurozone as a whole, and Dublin was a team player trying to help out — as if bankrupted Ireland was riding to the rescue of the EU.
Nobody believed Mr Cowen at home, and no one believed him abroad. Brian Lenihan walked economically naked into the meeting of fellow finance ministers in Brussels on Tuesday night and had little option but to surrender.
The Taoiseach again twisted in the Dáil, insisting there was no bailout in the offing — even as the IMF hit squad dispatched to Dublin readied for its reckoning of the state’s assets.
Mr Cowen was left looking not just ineffectual, but also little more than a fool.
His sudden announcement of an emergency Dáil statement fuelled fevered global speculation. Hugely influential business cable networks scrambled to carry the statement live. In the end Cowen said nothing of note, yet the cack-handed way he handled the entire crisis spoke volumes about his inability to lead. It took the intervention of the Central Bank governor Patrick Honohan to get a grip on the situation and provide some much needed clarity to a bewildered country — and even then ministers still refused to admit the truth.
In another historical analogy, the delusional Cowen government was like its French equivalent in the spring of 1940. Paris smugly brushed aside the inevitability of a German invasion, insisting the Maginot Line of forts it had built across the frontier would protect it.
Dublin’s Maginot Line was its pre-funding of the state in which it had squirrelled away enough borrowed money to keep the lights on until the middle of next year.
But Paris had forgotten about its weak spot — its failure to fortify the Belgium border, so the Germans just blitzkrieged through the neutral country, making the Maginot Line an expensive irrelevance.
And Dublin was similarly blindsided by its bailout of the banks which left its financial flank exposed as the money markets looked beyond the IOUs it had stuffed under the bed to keep it going until next June and instead focused on the dead weight of debts Cowen and Co had saddled the state with via Anglo and the other institutions — and more worrying how those failures threatened to cripple the entire eurozone in the way it was already crippling Ireland.
And so the imperial capital of Brussels dispatched Ajai Chopra — aka The Chopper — to be our new Governor General the unelected King of Budget Cuts. Even as he took up residence in the sumptuous Merrion Hotel with his team — half of whom have been battled hardened in trying to bring order to war-torn Afghanistan’s finances — to negotiate terms of economic surrender from the crushed Cowen government, the Taoiseach was telling the re-colonised people of Ireland they should not feel “ashamed”.
Still detached from reality, still dragging us down in the quagmire of his own making between delusion and denial, Cowen failed to realise only one person needed to be ashamed — himself.
A Taoiseach with any ounce of respect for the dignity of the office he holds would have resigned. Cowen just blamed everyone else but himself.
However, history will not lightly forgive his legacy.
Easter 1916: the Republic is born amidst bloody sacrifice and chaos — the colony rises to nationhood. Thursday, November 18, 2010 — the day the Republic died amidst chaos and bloody lies.
A colony once again, this time a dominion of the EU.
