Two more Green Party councillors have spoken out against a plan to supervise the voting in the forthcoming Seanad election to ensure that they vote for approved Fianna Fáil candidates. Cllr Nessa Childers from Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown and Cllr Niall Ó Brolcháin from Galway yesterday supported the stand taken by Cllr Bronwen Maher of Dublin City Council who has publicly objected to the plan.
Green councillors were informed in an e-mail from acting party leader Trevor Sargent last week that they would be asked to vote for a number of specified Fianna Fáil candidates and that the party would have to verify that this had taken place.
Ms Childers said she was very concerned about what councillors had been asked to do as it went against all the party stood for in terms of internal democracy. "I won't go along with this and I certainly won't have my vote inspected," she said. "There may not be a lot of internal democracy in Fianna Fáil, but we don't have to collude with it by voting for the certain favoured candidates." She added that she was prepared to vote for Fianna Fáil candidates as part of the deal for government, but did not want to be told which of them to support.
Mr Ó Brolcháin described the instruction sent out to party councillors as anti-democratic and said he would not be prepared to vote for specified Fianna Fáil candidates.
"It is reasonable to ask us to vote for Fianna Fáil candidates, but at the end of the day the choice should be left to the voter and not to Bertie Ahern. Fianna Fáil may be used to the idea of people being herded into a room and told how to vote, but we are not happy with that." He said that it was simply illegal to have ballot papers inspected and that was not going to happen. "This is a secret ballot and my understanding is that it would be illegal to have votes inspected, so it is not going to happen." He said that he had already been canvassed by Fianna Fáil candidates who were upset by the fact that a shortlist of favoured candidates was going to be circulated to the Greens.
"Some of the Fianna Fáil candidates appear to know who is going to be on that list, but we haven't been told yet."
Trinity candidate David Norris said yesterday that in his capacity as whip of the Independent group in Seanad Éireann he intended to write to the Taoiseach seeking clarification about the deal with the Green Party and full disclosure about its electoral aspects.
