BY ROBBIE MacGABHANN

Here are the facts as we understand them. Last week 529,478 people voted No to ratifying the Nice Treaty. The reasons why these people voted no are in reality unknown. However, some newspaper polls highlighted voter concerns about the Rapid Reaction Force proposals, the loss of political independence in decision-making and the loss of an EU Commissioner.

Sinn Féin campaigned for a No vote on these issues but also stressed the lack of democracy within EU institutions, the centralising of decision making in unelected bodies and the erosion of economic and political sovereignty through increased use of qualified majority voting. The party was also concerned with the proposals for Enhanced Cooperation, which they believe will give the larger and economically more wealthy states the ability to forge ahead with a two-division Europe.

Many of the other No campaigners, including the Greens, PANA and the National Platform had similar reasoning behind their campaign against the Nice Treaty.

This has not stopped the combined weight of the pro-Treaty Leinster House parties and the mainstream media organisations from putting their own interpretation on the results and those who campaigned for a No vote. The Leinster House interpretations run from claiming people just didn't know what the treaty was about, (and whose fault was that?) to blaming the Referendum Commission.

A far more sinister interpretation stemmed from the opinion and editorial pages of newspapers such as the Irish Times. This interpretation offers the opinion that those who voted No were constituted mainly of right wing Catholic fundamentalists.

Fintan O'Toole wrote this week that he believed ``the most influential group in terms of getting the No vote out were essentially the same people who have campaigned so effectively in the various divorce and anti-abortion referendums''.

Last week, Fintan used his column to call for a Yes vote in the referendum. He had been canvassed by the Christian Solidarity Party to vote No and this had prompted him, despite misgivings, to vote Yes in the Nice Treaty and to angst a little at the same time.

The logic at work seems to be that if it is happening on Fintan's door it must be happening everywhere and it must be stopped.

It is interesting that Fintan tells us that he wanted to hear the No campaign's vision of the EU and of Ireland. He says that having stopped the liberal establishment in its tracks, the No campaign had to take the floor.

Maybe he doesn't read An Phoblacht, or maybe he ignored the No campaign on Nice, because the issue of what kind of Ireland and what kind of Europe we want to live in has been central to the whole Sinn Féin campaign.

There has been a deliberate misunderstanding of what sort of Europe Sinn Féin wants to be part of. Sinn Féin wants to be part of a people's Europe, where the aim of policy and the goals of its institutions should be to improve the quality of life of all the people of Europe.

Sinn Féin wants to see a Europe defending our democratic rights not eroding them. It wants a Europe that will act collectively to promote equality across the EU in terms of the rights of women, children, disadvantaged communities, the aged etc.

Republicans want to see a Europe that will tackle racism and act decisively to protect and enhance our environment on an EU level.

Sinn Féin wants a Europe run democratically from the lowest possible level from the bottom to the top, not the reverse that is the case today.

What is so unpalatable for Fintan O'Toole in all of that? His writings continually stress the need for social justice in Irish society. Does he honestly believe that the EU envisaged in Nice is going to do anything to tackle any of the social justice issues that fill his columns?

Finally he talks of the ``liberal establishment''. There is no such thing in Irish society. The political establishment is not liberal. It is right wing and reactionary. It is they who are pandering to the conservative interests that want to plunge us into yet another referendum on abortion and it they who don't want to take even the smallest of steps towards tackling the range of inequalities afflicting Irish society today.

Political parties like Sinn Féin, the Greens and groups like PANA exist and are growing as a political force on the island because of the simple reality that there is no liberal establishment. The real establishment is filled with a mixture of the Padraig Flynns, McCreevys and Haugheys that O'Toole rails against in his article. It is backed up by the economic and financial interests so aptly written about by Fintan in his articles on the Beef Tribunal and the DIRT inquiry. These are not liberal forces, they are the voice of supreme self-interest and more voters are coming round to the notion that these interests must be confronted.

Maybe Fintan believes that the Irish Times is the liberal establishment. He wouldn't be the first Times scribe to labour under that delusion.

Nice - A victory for people power

BY JUSTIN MORAN

It is a rare thing to find myself agreeing wholeheartedly with Fianna Fáil General Secretary Martin Mackin but he was absolutely right in his predictions on the Nice vote. At the launch of the Fianna Fáil YES campaign he claimed that the winning side in the referendum would not be the side with the most money but the one that worked the hardest. Certainly the last few weeks have borne out this prediction in the clearest way imaginable.

And yet initially it seemed as if the range of forces for the YES vote would be invincible. But as Sinn Féin TD Caoimhgín Ó Caoláin put it, ``In the face of the united front of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Labour, the PDs, IBEC and the leaderships of ICTU and IFA, ordinary citizens endorsed the arguments of the NO campaign. The political elite has suffered a significant setback.''

Supremely confident of an easy win, the YES campaign chose to lie to the Irish people in an effort to get the Treaty through. It was about enlargement we were told. It was about helping countries in Eastern Europe. It was `Good for Them, Good for Us'. But it was none of these things and again and again proponents of the Treaty found themselves challenged and confronted by a NO campaign that fought on the issues, argued the text of the Treaty and won every debate, every argument and convinced the people.

The response of Fianna Fáil, left without a single reasonable argument to support Nice, was to fall back on abuse and insults. Any mud that could be found was flung. Ahern made ridiculous accusations based on a `hunch' about the funding of parts of the NO campaign. We found ourselves accused of racism by a government that mistreats refugees and is a target of Amnesty's campaign against racism. We found ourselves accused of greed by parties so rotten with corruption that their stink drives voters from the polls. But sneers at Sinn Féin's opposition to the Treaty and to militarism couldn't hide the fear that was creeping into the YES camp - a fear created by their growing realisation that they were losing the battle for Nice where it most counted, on the ground.

The battle for Nice was not won on the airwaves or in the media. It was won house-by-house, street-by-street and town-by-town as opponents to the Treaty took the debate to the people, empowered the people to make their decision. A level of commitment and energy was sustained that the establishment couldn't match. That Sinn Féin took the lead in this can be clearly seen from the results. Constituencies where Nice was most roundly rejected were almost without exception those where the Sinn Féin analysis, delivered by an indefatigable team of activists and local representatives, has been attracting support for years.

The highest NO vote was in Dublin South-West where Sinn Féin spearheaded the campaign and where a Republican TD now seems but a matter of time. Ahern's own constituency of Dublin Central delivered a powerful vote against the Treaty and who can doubt that the Sinn Féin machine in that constituency is staking a claim for a seat at the next election. Throughout the country, Sinn Féin's machine delivered crucial results in Kerry North, Louth, Cavan-Monaghan and elsewhere.

The reaction of the government and the `opposition' was an education in the blame game. All through Friday afternoon, as the results became clear, the debate moved to find someone to carry the can. Labour and Fine Gael united to put the blame on Fianna Fáil, ignoring Fine Gael's own abysmal campaign and Labour's failure to find supporters willing to put up posters without pay. Fianna Fáil blamed the Referendum Commission and is already warning that the Commission is going to be targeted for `reform' before the next referendum. Having denied that organisation the time needed to prepare both sides of the argument, the government sought to use it as a scapegoat. Dermot Ahern especially, seemed shocked that the Referendum Commission had put forward arguments other than those that had received the Fianna Fáil seal of approval as being facts.

The media has not spared the NO campaign either. Writing in the Sunday Independent, Emer O'Kelly, referring to the electorate, quoted Yeats `you have disgraced yourselves again.' Other newspapers were only too happy to portray the campaign against Nice as one filled with lies and misrepresentation, with the Irish Times even going so far as to suggest the NO campaign exploited xenophobia. There were honourable exceptions of course. Writing in Monday's Irish Times, John Waters wondered have we come to the stage where we are so accepting of media bias in this country that we allow the debate post-Nice to centre on what went wrong and what can be done to change it instead of accepting the result.

Nice is not dead. The government, which has long berated others for not recognising democracy, now finds little difficulty in ignoring the verdict of the Irish people. Already plans are underway for a second referendum and this time the YES campaign will be better organised and better funded. Fianna Fáil. Fine Gael and Labour will all hit the streets and work feverishly for a YES vote. And the progressive forces in this country will organise again if necessary. And we'll win again.

``Government defying the people on Nice'' - Ó Caoláin

Speaking in the Dáil on Tuesday in the debate on the rejection of the Nice Treaty Sinn Féin TD Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin slammed the government for defying the decision of the people in the referendum. We carry his statement below:
    
There is a growing sense of anger and disbelief among people that their will as expressed on 7 June is being flagrantly violated by this government and the other EU governments

``I want to commend the electorate in this State who rejected the Nice Treaty on 7 June. It was a tremendous victory for Irish democracy, sovereignty and independent foreign policy. I commend also those who campaigned for a NO vote against the odds. We did so despite attempted moral blackmail, disinformation and arrogance on the part of the Yes campaign. The people's approval for this Treaty was taken for granted and they were treated as a rubber stamp.

But it was our stance that was vindicated by the electorate in their rejection of the Nice Treaty. It is farcical for the Fine Gael and Labour parties now to seize on the loss of the referendum by the Yes campaign as a stick to beat the government. They all stood together in support of the Nice Treaty, despite the scathing criticism of it from the Fine Gael and Labour leaders when it was negotiated last December. They have all now been given their answer by the people.

The Nice Treaty is now legally dead because it must be ratified by all the member states. This state has refused to ratify the Treaty in the most democratic fashion - and that is by the vote of the people. It is an outrage to suggest that the same Treaty can be put before the people again in the hope that this time they will make the `right' decision from the point of view of those who do not like the decision they made on 7 June.

There is a growing sense of anger and disbelief among people that their will as expressed on 7 June is being flagrantly violated by this government and the other EU governments. The statement of the EU Foreign Ministers in Luxembourg is a disgrace. The ministers claimed in one breath to respect the will of the Irish people and then ``excluded any reopening of the text signed in Nice'' and went on to say that ``the ratification process will continue on the basis of this text and in accordance with the agreed timetable''.

In agreeing to such a statement, the Minister for Foreign Affairs Brian Cowen clearly defied the decision of the electorate. The people were asked to accept or reject an amendment to the Constitution to ratify the Treaty of Nice. They said NO.

We have also had statements by the Swedish Presidency and the French President Jacques Chirac that Nice must be ratified. President Chirac described the Irish referendum result as a ``difficulty'' which would have to be ``overcome''. EU Commission President Romano Prodi says he ``does not know and does not care'' if the Commission's attempt to dictate the contents of the Irish Budget had any influence on the referendum outcome. These arrogant pledges to proceed with Nice regardless of the fact that the Irish referendum has refused to ratify it confirms everything that we in the No campaign have said about the anti-democratic nature of the drive to an EU superstate.

There is no doubt that the defence of Irish neutrality and independent foreign policy was one of the key issues for people who voted NO. They remembered the broken promise to hold a referendum on NATO's Partnership for Peace and therefore they did not trust this government's promises in relation to neutrality and Nice. This government should now withdraw from both the Rapid Reaction Force and NATO's PfP.

The EU enlargement process can proceed. This time we can have an arrangement which, unlike the Nice Treaty, is really about enlargement and is not a device to further empower the larger states and the EU bureaucracy at the expense of sovereign democracies. What cannot and should not proceed is the further integration and centralisation of the EU, and the creation of a two-tier system as provided for in the now rejected Treaty of Nice.

We must take time for a real debate on the future of the EU. I welcome the announcement of a Forum on Europe. It should be an All-Ireland Forum. I look forward to the Taoiseach's promised consultation with the main opposition parties on its terms of reference. Of course the main opposition parties on this issue in the House are my party Sinn Féin, the Green Party and the Socialist Party.

In that debate, Sinn Féin advocates an EU of the people - not of the bureaucrats and the arrogant political elites who were rejected by the Irish electorate last week.''