Libertas turn their no-holds barred media policy on their own
It’s been funny to watch how fast the pan-European Libertas movement has disintegrated into infighting. Like embattled Iranian mullahs, they’re now turning their guns on their own:
UNSUCCESSFUL LIBERTAS candidate for Dublin Caroline Simons sent a legal letter to Declan Ganley’s spokesman [John McGuirk] the day after the European elections accusing the spokesman of defaming her.
Ms Simons’s complaint related to a press release issued to the media in her name describing an international Jewish organisation, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, as “beneath contempt”.
Mr McGuirk said yesterday: “I’m very disappointed that a candidate who didn’t perform particularly well in the election would choose to embarrass herself like this.”
The subsequent letter from Ms Simons’s solicitor to Mr McGuirk said the original statement issued on her behalf was defamatory.
Ms Simons’s solicitor had instructed Mr McGuirk to issue a new statement to the media outlets that had received the original release, saying Ms Simons was “in fact an ardent supporter” of the Wiesenthal centre and its causes.
Ah, got to love that right-wing integrity and solidarity, eh? I guess that’s what you get when your guiding principle is “every man for himself”.
Mark Coughlan has a summary of Libertas’s European follies over on Irish Election and hints that there’s more circular-firing-squad comedy gold to be mined in them there hills.
June 16th, 2009 at 9:33 am
HAH! “circular-firing-squad comedy gold to be mined in them there hills.” Brilliant! I actually laughed out loud! That’s the best sentence I’ve read in quite a while…
June 16th, 2009 at 8:23 pm
Hold on. Wasn’t McGuirk her director of elections too?
June 18th, 2009 at 5:05 pm
@Mark: Thanks!
@Shane: Um – not sure. But neither are they, it seems.