Lisbon line is ‘never mind the question — yes is the answer’

BECAUSE it is such an important event, the referendum on the Lisbon treaty requires a fair bit of scrutiny. So, Lisbon is the capital of Portugal, a charming holiday destination in southern Europe.

A treaty is a signed contact between countries and a referendum is a question put to an electorate (you and I).

The secret to this is what’s the question? When you go into the polling booth in the summer and you are asked to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’, do you know what the actual question is?

You are a citizen of Europe living in the only country that is permitting its citizens to make an informed decision, so how informed are you?

What is the question to which they want your direct answer?

The form in the polling station will have no provision for “maybe”, or “not sure yet” or “ask me one on sport”.

You are going to have to commit yourself one way or the other.

When the votes are added up, one side or the other over there on the ‘mainland’ are going to see your action as an endorsement for everything they do from then on.

Maybe you could not care less and you figure you will be dead before anything major happens as a result of the Lisbon treaty.

If, however, you would like to know what the question is, there is bad news and bad news.

All the mainstream parties are in favour of it and each has prepared a simple little one page synopsis of the treaty.

Naturally, they are under no obligation to tell you any of the bad bits. Their leaflets are simple, positive propaganda with the get-out clause that if any of it seems wrong to you, well it is only their interpretation.

If you interpret it differently to them, then you are probably wrong as each party has political analysts and they have been doing it for years. The dreaded Shinners have their leaflet, too, and we all know that they are just communists and socialists and anarchists and that class of thing. Their interpretation is full of awful things that will happen if you vote ‘yes’.

Will you be making your mind up on the strength of leaflets from FF, FG, Labour, SF or the Greens?

Have the PDs a leaflet? Are they even still out there?

The leaflets are bad news, but the treaty itself is even worse news for you. It would take you a couple of hours just to read out every word in the lengthy document.

Of course you won’t understand what it means because that is the plan. At a guess, it was written by a battery of solicitors, distilled by a gaggle of bureaucrats and refined by a coven of politicians.

By the time you get your hands on this weighty tome, it has been perfected to say everything and nothing with equal ease. There is no actual question in it.

In theory, you should be able to read what will happen if Europe endorses the treaty.

It should be an objective description of what our lords and masters intend to do on our behalf. If it was, then you could signal a green light or red light on polling day. But the treaty is not that at all.

You could be forgiven for thinking our elected representatives have dispensed with the dreary requirement of seeking our consensus and have instead decided to pursue their own careers.

The perfect vehicle for this is to make the treaty itself illegible and just feed us a leaflet containing platitudes we would like to hear (and they cannot be sued for) and then bombard us with crap.

As the referendum gets closer, if you harbour any reservations about it or, God forbid, ask a direct question, you will be accused of being anti-European, anti-progress and even a dreaded Shinner.

The Lisbon line seems to be “never mind the question — ‘yes’ is the answer”. I’m not signing something like that.

John Mallon

Shamrock Grove

Mayfield

Cork