Mask slips to show cancer at heart of SF - Defending Adams’ defence

IF there are none so blind as those who will not see then Sinn Féin’s Oireachtas members and supporters better start learning braille. 

Its deputies’ and senators’ continuing, bewildering endorsement of Gerry Adams’ support for former IRA chief and borderlands godfather Thomas Slab Murphy indicates one of two things. It indicates the kind of iron discipline demanded by cults that have abandoned reason or it indicates the kind of fear that makes institutions like the Special Criminal Court (SCC) essential in the defence of our democracy.

The Pavlovian defence of Mr Adams’ “good republican” assertion swung from the disingenuous to the bizarre, but it has all been astoundingly hypocritical, even by Sinn Féin’s standards. Nowhere has this disconnect been more apparent than in the belated statement from Mr Adams’ deputy and presumptive heir Mary Lou McDonald. Deputy McDonald is indeed the same person who used Dáil privilege to accuse, without evidence, former ministers Des O’Malley and Gerry Collins, and others, of having used offshore banking services to dodge tax. Though those charges have never been substantiated Ms McDonald has neither withdrawn nor apologised for making them despite the slur on the impeccable reputations of these true Republicans. She was found to have breached Dáil rules for naming them under the protection of Dáil privilege but now she can, with a straight face, support Mr Adams’ view that tax dodger Thomas Slab Murphy is a “good republican” — albeit with her less-than-strident caveat that everyone must pay their taxes in full, including Murphy.

This is the same Ms McDonald who, rightly, vigorously attacked the Catholic Church when the damning Murphy report was published. But two years ago, when Mairia Cahill went public with her story of rape and sexual abuse at the hands of PIRA members, she again accepted Mr Adams’ version of history. She pulled her punches rather than condemn her vehicle to power with the odium she heaps on other wrongdoers. But she is not alone in her double speak.

Mr Adams, speaking on radio in Louth where he challenged the decision to hear the Murphy case in the SCC, said he is under no obligation to “swallow” the “baggage” of the State. Is it really necessary to point out to a Dáil deputy that we have a Constitution and that we are all bound by it? Mr Adams and his inner circle have let their masks slip and Sinn Féin’s officer class laid bare is a chilling, anti-democratic prospect. Hopefully this blindness does not afflict all Sinn Féin members or those who might vote for them. It would be a sliver of comfort if they were able to show they can, in this instance at least, tell right from wrong and act accordingly.

One of the Sinn Féin chorusline was correct though. Martin Ferris, once a habitué of the SCC and a long-time associate of Murphy, said that “there is a deliberate campaign by the political establishment ... to prevent the growth of Sinn Féin”. How right he is. That campaign is growing because anyone who cares for this country is appalled by the idea that these apologists for Murphy might get even a whiff of power in this once-again besieged Republic.