by Eamonn McDermott, Inishowen Independent
ÓGRA Fianna Fáil in Inishowen has accused the
Government of “yet another hypocritical u-turn” by
holding the presidential election on a Thursday.
The chairperson of FF's youth wing in the peninsula,
Gemma McGrory, said that despite repeated promises
to the contrary, the Fine Gael, Labour coalition
"continued to disenfranchise third level students".
She said: “We had a national campaign under the
banner of ‘Your President, Your voice’ encouraging a
change so that elections would be held on a Friday.
“Labour Youth also called for elections to be held
on Fridays, while Young Fine Gael said the elections
should be on a Saturday.”
“We are not happy about the situation where third
level students do not get a chance to vote in things
like the presidential election.
“Don’t forget that on the same day as the
residential election there are two referenda taking
place and so by holding it on a Thursday when most
third level students cannot get home to vote means
that they are effectively being denied a say in
shaping the laws of this country.”
Ms McGrory added: “I suppose we should not be too
surprised at yet another u-turn from this government
who have gone back on almost every promise they made
before the election. It is unacceptable that
students should be denied the vote in this manner.
“We have called on the relevant ministers to answer
this and the best we got was that the weekend after
the presidential election is a bank holiday and so
it would be too expensive to have to pay staff
overtime to do the count.
“If that’s the case, why did the Government not set
the election for the week previous or the week
afterwards? There was no reason why they had to be
held on October 27.
“This government simply does not care that thousands
of third level students will be disenfranchised by
their decision to hold the first election under
their control on a Thursday despite their promise
and loud complaints when they were in opposition.”
February’s general election was held on a Friday
while the 2009 local and European elections were
also held on a Friday. The last presidential
election, held in 1997, was held on a Thursday. |
