Referendum booklet pictures can paint a thousand biased words

HAVE you checked your post yet? By now the first Referendum Commission booklet on the Nice Referendum, The EU and How It Works, will have arrived.

And you won't believe what's in it.

There's a cartoon depicting the EU as a big sow surrounded by lots of piglets, some of them sucking away merrily. But she's devouring one of them, called Slovenia. Or is it Slovakia? Then there's another picture showing the accession of different countries to the EU. Nation states are featured as people walking downwards along a plank, before disappearing into a big black hole, labelled United States of Europe.

All very propagandistic and tasteless don't you think? Like those cartoons in Punch and other 19th century British periodicals, which depicted Ireland as a pig, or a fat sub-human character, about to destroy its offspring. Those cartoons always painted Britain in heroic terms for example as a lion or a classical personification of justice, ready to save Ireland from itself. Needless to say, they played their part in reinforcing British establishment prejudice towards Ireland in the 19th century. For such is the power of images.

By now, you've opened the booklet and you know I've been fibbing. There are no pig and piglets, no black hole and nothing to paint the EU as a menacing or oppressive force. And a good thing too, I hear you say, because images like that would show a terrible anti-European bias. Whereas the Referendum Commission is, in its own words, "an independent body set up to provide you, the voter, with impartial information explaining the Nice Treaty and the issues involved".

But look at the images the commission has actually used, and you will find considerable evidence of bias. First, we have the various European treaties fitted out with angelic wings, the Nice Treaty among them. The message? The European treaties are good news for us all.

When you turn the page, you see that a shiny 1 coin is portrayed as the sun, shining over the proud monuments of Europe There they all are, the Eiffel Tower, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and the Round Tower of Glendalough, soaking up its rays. The message this time? With the euro, heat, light and prosperity. Without the euro, Siberia.

But none of these propagandistic images can compare with the mammy figure who represents enlargement. She's half Marge Simpson and half Sinead O'Connor, though a great deal larger than both. She sits cross-legged, while holding 15 flag-waving children in her arms. And All around her we see other flag-waving babies, symbolising the EU applicant states, waiting to be taken up and nurtured.

The Referendum commission has clearly lost the plot. These images are designed to create feelings of warmth and sympathy in the public towards the Nice Treaty, and, as such, they are quite unfair. The anti-Nice campaign is understandably annoyed and one of its groups, Equal in Europe, has called on the Referendum commission to account for its use of the drawings. It wants to know what research was conducted among voters by the commission's advertising agency before the booklet was prepared, and how any such research was used in deciding what images to include.

The task of the Referendum Commission was never going to be easy. It was born in controversial circumstances, after the Supreme Court ruled in the 1995 McKenna judgment that the Government had acted unconstitutionally by using taxpayers' money to fund the Yes campaign in the divorce referendum. But the commission never really found its feet. Refereeing a referendum campaign is a difficult task and the commission's attempt to portray both Yes and No arguments during the first Nice Referendum caused chaos in the public mind, and possibly the defeat of the referendum. Not surprisingly, the Government then brought forward legislation to change the way the commission operated, so that this time there will be no attempt to present arguments on either side.

But judging by its first booklet, the Referendum commission is now functioning worse than ever. It has departed radically from its remit by using highly suggestive images and graphics, and this leads to the big question. How did it get things so wrong? Was it stupidity or political interference?

The problem for the Government is that the public is likely to suspect the latter, because there is already evidence that the Government is trying to get around the McKenna judgment by slipping money towards the Yes campaign. Several State-owned bodies have given large contributions to the pro-Nice side, the Sunday Independent reported last week. An Post, Bord Gais and Aer Rianta have all paid the full 5,000 contribution demanded by IBEC (Irish Business and Employers Confederation) for its Yes campaign, and the VHI was unwilling to say how much it gave to supporters of the Yes side.

This revelation is the latest bullet-in-the-foot for the Government's campaign. The public will not differentiate between State funding and semi-State funding, any more than it will be fooled by the emotive graphics in the Referendum Commission's booklet. Instead, people may conclude that the Government is trying to spin the Nice Referendum as they tried to spin the state of the economy before the General Election.

For months now, the Government has been warning us about the economic consequences of a No vote. They roped in IBEC and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions to ram home the message that foreign companies would take their investment elsewhere. A No vote would portray Ireland as opting for the periphery of Europe, rather than the centre, the Taoiseach told us.

It was never a very strong argument, because large companies don't decide on the basis of feelings or perceptions where they will invest. They already know all the reasons why people are voting either Yes or No. And they know that, while Ireland might dig in its heels over Nice, there isn't a chance in hell that we would ever leave the European Union.

The Government's economic argument has been further weakened now that its duplicity over cutbacks has been exposed. "If you couldn't be trusted to tell us the true state of our economy before the general election," the question goes, "how can we trust you to tell us the true state of the economy after Nice?"

How indeed? Especially as, in recent days, some prominent business people have joined the No side. Andrew Koch, senior European equity fund manager at HSBC Asset Management, says a No vote might result in a knee-jerk reaction from investors, but is unlikely to have any long-term impact on international investors' perceptions of the Irish stock market. While Dr John Teeling, entrepreneur and former finance lecturer at UCC, doesn't think Nice is necessary for continued growth. "We need the EU, not Nice. I am very concerned about low-tech companies here," he says of the consequences of a Yes vote. "There will be very substantial losses in indigenous jobs."

Wouldn't it be nice if the Government was more honest about Nice? By acknowledging the truth of the matter, that there are economic arguments both for and against a Yes vote, it might regain some of the credibility it has lost in recent days. And perhaps prevent a backlash when people go to the polls.