Right2Change launches 'Chance for Change' Dáil election campaign with 96 candidates, including Sinn Féin

THE Right2Change campaign launched its Dáil general election campaign in Dublin on Monday, announcing 96 candidates who have endorsed the campaign's principles – including Sinn Féin and enough to form a progressive Government where a majority needed in the 32nd Dáil is 80 seats.

Joining Right2Change Co-ordinator Brendan Ogle of the Unite trade union and Right2Change spokesperson John Douglas, Mandate trade union General Sectretary, at the launch, Sinn Féin deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald reaffirmed the party's commitment to Right2Change.

She urged Sinn Féin voters to transfer to other Right2Change candidates.

“What unites us is deeper than what separates us,” Mary Lou said. “This is our chance for change. This is our moment. We all have an opportunity to vote for change on February 26th.”

Fine Gael/Labour and Fianna Fáil represent “Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dumber”, she said. They are relics of the old politics, the old Ireland, she said.

Brendan Ogle pointed to last week's Irish Times/MRBI poll that showed two thirds of voters want change and that only those in the AB group – “who happen to include the highest earners in the state and have benefited most from this Government's tax breaks” – want Fine Gael/Labour back in power.

“Last year, when hundreds of thousands of people took to our streets to assert their Right2Water, it was clear they were not only protesting about water charges,” Brendan Ogle said. “They were protesting against growing poverty levels, homelessness, mass emigration and endemic inequality. They were crying out for a change in how our country is run.'

Noting to reporters that in all of the media coverage of last Friday's gang murder on a Dublin hotel there was barely a mention, if any, that many of the residents of the hotel were homeless, he added that when a Government puts bondholders before homeless children and families, he said, then it is surely time for change.

John Douglas said:

“In this election, there is a choice – the status quo with more of the same or a progressive government based on the Right2Change principles.”

Right2Change is also organising a mass pre-election rally at the Garden of Remembrance in Dublin at 2pm on Saturday 20 February – one week before the election.

This is preceded by a major conference in Dublin's Mansion House next weekend (Saturday 13 February) with a panel of expert speakers from Irealnd, Britain and Canada, and including progressive economist and former SYRIZA MP Yanis Varoufakis speaking via a live video link.