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Michae D clarification E-mail
Written by Administrator   
Wednesday, 25 July 2007
Dear Editor,

Thank you for your coverage of the Tom Johnson Summer School and for the quotations from my paper, ‘Facing the Future - Labour's Role in the coming decade’ (which is available on request).  I must however, correct your headline 'Michael D. accuses the Greens of supping with the Devil'. I made no accusation against the Greens, but I did quote one of their senior members who used this phrase to describe the difficult choice they had to make in the post election situation.

In my paper, I drew a distinction between what I suggested were the separate issues of offering an arrangement for the election on the one hand and forming a Government, the people having voted, on the other.   I suggested that while one can go into the election with a proposal for a change of Government, the election having taken place, one has to address the situation that then arises as a new political circumstance.

In the course of my paper, I drew attention to the large proportion of votes, which transferred between Labour and the Greens and vice versa, and not just in Galway West, but throughout the country. The fact is that the pattern of transfers from eliminations and surplus when a Green candidate went out, if there was a surviving Labour candidate, the transfers were to that candidate. There was a similar transfer where there was a surviving Green candidate. The truth is political commentators have paid insufficient attention to the fact that Labour and Green number one and number two voters transferred overwhelmingly to each other.

The fact is that both parties share a political position on a great number of the more important issues.

Yours sincerely,
Michael D. Higgins


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