McKenna won’t seek Green party nomination

FORMER MEP and anti-Lisbon campaigner Patricia McKenna said she will not seek the Green party nomination to contest a seat in next year’s European election because she would be forced to toe the Government line.

Today’s Hot Press magazine reports that Fianna Fáil has put pressure on its junior coalition partners not to allow McKenna contest a seat for the Green party in the European Parliament because of her anti-Lisbon stance which is against Government policy.

It quotes a Green Party source who says: “It would be a political nightmare having Patricia McKenna as an MEP, speaking out against her party colleagues in the Dáil.”

Just three weeks ago, Ms McKenna said she intended to seek the party nomination to contest the seat she lost in 2004 after ten years as an MEP.

But in an interview in Hot Press, Ms McKenna said: “If I ran for the Greens, I would be asked to toe the parliamentary party line and — if issues arise in relation to militarisation and Lisbon — to stay quiet in the European Parliament. But I would –— as I have done in the past — have to speak out.

“How would party members feel about me making things difficult for the members of Government? I would feel like a hypocrite and realise that I am just the same as all the rest,” she said.

McKenna was expected to go head-to-head with Senator Deirdre de Burca to seek the party nomination in a convention on September 13.

Candidates have until next week to put their name forward and require the signature of at least ten others.

Ms De Burca, said yesterday she still has not put her name forward but will be consulting her party colleagues on the issue.

Ms McKenna’s future in the party looks in doubt if she contests an MEP seat in another guise, possibly as an independent or as part of the People’s Movement.

“The refusal of the Greens to say the treaty is dead means they have agreed with Fianna Fáil that they will get it through, regardless of our rejection via a democratic vote,” she said.

“This is very worrying, and by running for a party, which through its silence is conspiring with the political elite to overturn our decision, I would be giving tacit support to this betrayal of the people,” she told Hot Press.