Leo Varadkar does not care about Garda corruption – he just wants a snap election where Fine Gael policies are not subject to scrutiny.
Why else would you offer full confidence in a Justice Minister who sat idly by after she was repeatedly told that the police were running a malicious campaign to discredit Maurice McCabe?
Why support a Minister who failed to hand over documents to a tribunal charged with investigating the smear campaign?
Varadkar is driven by cynical calculations. He knows that a snap general election will be dominated by a media battle. There will few fewer conversations on the doorsteps.
His calculation is that Fine Gael’s support base will turn out to vote – while working class voters will stay at home in disgust at this charade.
He wants to return to office in an election that brings a lower turnout of working class voters.
Fianna Fail is just as bad. Today they are calling for Fitzgerald’s resignation but they have helped Fine Gael in supporting the corrupt practices of the Gardai.
• Neither Fine Gael or Fianna Fail have called for the sacking of top management of the Gardaí even though they admitted that almost 1.5 million bogus breath tests were recorded by Gardaí between June 7, 2009 and April 10, 2017.
They have stood silently by even though an internal Garda report has stated that they did not ‘discover any behaviour that would merit criminal investigation”. 15,000 ordinary citizens were dragged before the courts – even though they did nothing wrong.
• Both Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil backed up the former Garda Commissioner, Noirin o Sullivan, when she was orchestrating a smear campaign against Garda whistleblowers.
• Fianna Fail and Fine Gael said nothing when it was revealed that O Sullivan’s husband Detective Superintendent, Jim McGowan, was running Operation Mizen to spy on citizens who were involved in the anti-water charges campaign. They gave full backing to the police when they instigated political charges of effective kidnapping to lock up Jobstown protestors.
• Fianna Fail and Fine Gael did nothing when it was revealed that the penalty points were wiped off the record of individuals who were friendly with the police, including the editor of the Irish Independent who got rid of a journalist who was critical of the Gardai.
• They did not call for a proper investigation into why Gardai failed to move against drug dealing gangs – even when it was alleged that informants were being protected.
The reality is that there is deep corruption at the heart of a state that has been shaped by the policies of Fianna Fail and Fine Gael.
Francis Fitzgerald should be thrown out of office – and there should be no blackmail about a Christmas election.
But if Varadkar still wants to play his cynical games, the left is more than ready to go into battle.
Of one thing we are sure – the elite often under-estimates the intelligence and anger of he Irish people.
We have no doubt they are doing it again.