Madam, - Your Editorial of April 23rd seems to echo the opinion of the French Minister of Culture, who thinks that a referendum on the EU Constitution is a mistake. Much better to have the experts and élites decide on a Constitution that will directly affect 450 million people, because the people might vote No - for the "wrong" reasons!
But it is precisely because the ordinary people of France increasingly realise that the Constitution enshrines the liberalising politics of their own government, and of the pro-liberalising European Commission, that a majority intends to vote No.
Panic-stricken assertions that the Constitution will prevent super-liberalisation, US-style, are untrue. The Constitution commits the EU to progressive liberalisation. It will provide the framework for the EU to liberalise international "trade" in social services, in particular health and education, through the GATS. The unrestricted veto on trade in these services is to go, meaning governments which oppose the creeping privatisation that goes with such trade can be overruled.
So far from defending the European "social" model, the Constitution is the gravedigger of universal access to high-quality services. Ordinary people in France and throughout Europe realise that it is they who will lose from this, despite the capitulation of their traditional socialist leaders to the liberalisers.
Voting No is the first step to seeking an alternative to the privatising drive of the EU and to the economic priorities of an open market with free competition and a monetary policy of price stability, also enshrined in the Constitution.
These commitments mean that social welfare, employment and sustainability always take second place. Insistence on competitiveness has led to the perverse lengthening of the working week and proposals to raise retirement age, when millions are unemployed.
Competition does not address mass unemployment in France or Germany, nor the crisis facing 100 million impoverished Eastern Europeans. It is a race to the bottom between those who have jobs and those who don't, and between the poor and the very poor.
The current French government and the European Commission, in promoting the EU Constitution, are singing from the same hymn-sheet. Are we to believe that economic liberalisers, who think that the profit motives of the market should penetrate all areas of life and all social services, are campaigning for a Constitution that will block such liberalisation?
The ordinary people of France have realised what's going on, and intend to vote No. We should follow their lead - Yours, etc.,
BRENDAN YOUNG, Campaign Against the EU Constitution, Dublin Road, Celbridge, Co Kildare.