Jun 8, 2009

Elections

Fianna Fail and the Greens have lost out big time. Opposition party leaders are claiming that such defeats in the locals and the euros nullifies the mandate of the government. Kenny has called for a motion of no confidence and Gilmore is making similar noises.

Ganley can't believe that he didn't sweep to victory and is putting protest after protest on procedural issues.

The count was suspended last night. Libertas leader Declan Ganley asked the returning officer, Kieran McDermott, to “check out” a report that “a bin of Ganley votes” had been mistakenly allocated to another candidate, according to Mr Ganley’s spokesman.

At 11.35pm last night, Mr McDermott announced a recheck of votes today “in the light of what Mr Ganley has said to us”.

Bit of a sore loser that one. Another sore loser was Deirdre de Burca who requested a full recount but in the end settled for a bundle recount. De Burca claimed to run an Obama-like campaign which is one of the reasons that she did not reply to those posing policy questions to her on twitter. Bad political decision de Burca.

I was at the Cork count centre yesterday and snapped a few pix that I'll put later. What I found very interesting is that Crowley and Kelly were signing autographs - a definitely case of celebrity gone mad. Politicians are supposed to be our representatives not celebrities.

The reason I was at the count centre in the first place was that RTE was providing no information and the Irish Times site was shite. I got most of my info online - well grateful for that. Without the bloggers there would be no stream of updates. RTE focussed more on sport than on politics, despite the vital nature of these elections.

I overhead half a conversation at the count centre. A journalist from a popular national radio station was saying

"RTE have scuppered it for another five minutes."

and

"We're waiting for the cue from RTE."

Despite the huge resources of the national broadcaster, they could not get their collective ass in gear. The results were delayed because RTE are incompetent. Plastic Sheeting was hanging around like a great buffoon. All in all I was unimpressed with those who were paid to report. RTE fail.

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