Quote from: Hound on March 25, 2024, 08:44:07 AMThanks for that RH. I see the odd McDowell piece in the paper, i don't frequent his website.
McDowell's claim that SF was undemocratic wasn't because she was elected unopposed though.
If you believe some puppet master told Coveney, Donohue, Humohries, McEntee etc that they were not permitted to contest the election then that would be equivalent alright. Personally I don't think Harris is controlled by shawdowy puppet master figures. I think he really wants it and will make decisions (whether good or bad) himself and for his personal agenda of what he thinks would be successful. And he has persuaded most of his elected parliamentary colleagues to side with him. The other potential contenders were either not interested (SC and PD) or knew they would lose (everyone else).
Here's some of what McDowell said about SF (from the 2019 article that was linked):
I think Sinn Féin is still an undemocratic, marxist movement masquerading as a conventional political party. Most of its members are probably unaware of its true nature.
Let me pose two questions.
Why did Sinn Féin recently spend a large sum sending a delegation to the inauguration of the undemocratic marxist, Nicolas Maduro, as president of Venezuela?
How precisely was Michelle O'Neill chosen to succeed Martin McGuinness as leader of Sinn Féin in the North?
In the case of Maduro, the Provisional movement have long backed communist movements in that region. They sold their weapons technology to the Farc communists in neighbouring Colombia in exchange for millions of narco-dollars. They had, despite denials, a permanent representative in Castro's Cuba. The common thread was a belief that they were and are a revolutionary movement with a marxist orientation. Readers of An Phoblacht over the years will remember the constant stream of supportive articles for marxist revolutionary groups internationally.
It should come as absolutely no surprise that the party sent a delegation to Caracas to celebrate the subversion of democracy in what used to be one to Latin America's most liberal states.
This may not lie easily with the polished, bourgeois professional image which the Party seeks to create using Mary Lou McDonald and, until recently, the urbane Peadar Tóibín.
But the truth is that Sinn Féin is rigidly controlled by a small clique of Provo veterans who are puppet-masters in what appears to be a normal democratic party.
It was they who chose Michelle O'Neill. It is they who secured the unopposed election of Mary Lou as the party's Uachtarán. It is their network of commissars who impose order and discipline on the party's members. It is they who decide on strategy. It is they who will decide if and when the party resumes participation in the NI executive.
In true marxist style, the entire party is subject to what Lenin described as "democratic centralism".
Sinn Féin members of the Oireachtas do not choose their advisors, interns or secretaries. The party commissars make those decisions. By this means all vestiges of political privacy and autonomy are absent.
We are still somewhat in the dark as to whether the party confiscates its public representatives' earnings and allowances over certain average industrial wage thresholds to apply them to party purposes under the guise of a voluntary contribution to the support of the party.
Most Sinn Féin members, elected and un-elected, are outside the loop of decision-making. I do not believe for one minute that Mary Lou or Michelle is in charge of the party rather than the old gang in the backroom of the Felons' Club on the Andersonstown Road.
If the party does not make sufficient progress at the polls, either or both of them will receive a tap on the shoulder from the Felons' Club – not from the ordinary members.
Sinn Féin is not a democratic or republican party. It remains a carefully constructed façade for a small, manipulative and undemocratic clique with very different values.
He pretty much nailed it.