SEAMAS RATIGAN,
Sir, - Chris Patten's attempt (The Irish Times, February 19th) to lecture us on how we should conduct our democracy is not unexpected from one with his background in the British Tory Party, however much he presents himself today as the international diplomat.
It may be news to Mr Patten, but in our Republic it is the people who are sovereign, not a parliament or a head of state. The sovereign people, having already voted on the Nice Treaty and rejected it in its present form, are not required to vote again on this issue and any attempt to force the issue is bullying, whatever gloss is put on it. Not only that, but a crass impertinence and a gross insult to the Irish people who bothered to come out to vote in the Nice referendum.
It is entirely misleading propaganda put out by Mr Patten and others to suggest that the people voted against the expansion of the EU to other countries in the east of Europe. This was not an issue in the campaign against the Nice Treaty. Militarisation and dictatorial powers for the Commission were. The facts are, and Mr Patten knows this well, that the large powers - Britain, Germany and France - used the Treaty to put in protective measures for their own economies against the agriculture and labour power of Eastern Europe and create a second-class membership for these countries not much beyond associate status for many years in the future. So, to accuse the Irish people of being against expansion is a propaganda slur worthy of the late Josef Goebbels.
If our own Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, had kept his pre-1997 election promise to hold a referendum on Ireland joining the European Rapid Reaction Force, the Nice result might have been quite different.
But, then, broken promises are nothing new to Mr Patten either, as the Tory governments he belonged to in Britain have notoriously proven. - Yours, etc.
SEAMAS RATIGAN,
Dublin 8.