PRESIDENT’S REMARKS ILL-JUDGED AND UNREPRESENTATIVE
Issued : Monday 13 February, 2006
PRESIDENT’S REMARKS ILL-JUDGED AND UNREPRESENTATIVE
President McAleese’s recent remarks in Saudi Arabia on the ‘Danish’ cartoons reveal a problem that has become increasingly apparent in her Presidential style.
While the President may have been entitled to say that the Government held this view (although this is itself not clear) she did not speak, as she claimed, for the people of Ireland. At the very least there is a wide divergence of opinion in this country about the cartoons and the response among Muslims, many of whom have been genuinely upset.
The equivalence in her remarks between ‘abhorrence’ of the cartoons with ‘abhorrence’ of the violence that that has claimed many lives across the Arab world is an assessment that few Irish people would accept.
It is difficult to imagine that the President would not have discussed with her entourage the likelihood of such a question from the press. One therefore cannot avoid the suspicion that the President’s answers were consequently dictated by the fact that her visit was coincidental with an Irish trade mission to Saudi Arabia.
The President should explain why she thought it necessary to make this statement in a country whose government flouts the UN Charter of Human Rights, deprives women of the vote, routinely uses torture and suppresses democratic debate and freedom of speech.
Following on from her infamous ‘Nazi’ remarks in relation to Ulster unionism, the President has again showed poor judgement and a disregard for informed public opinion in the country in which she holds the highest public office.
Cllr 
