GENEVIEVE CARBERY

It was standing room only at the launch of new political party Direct Democracy Ireland in Dublin yesterday, as over 200 supporters crammed into a conference room at Buswell’s hotel.

The party, which wants to “introduce participatory democracy”, aims to run candidates in the 2014 local and European elections.

Yesterday it began a “recruitment drive” and intends to build a network across the State.

The party has outlined three main aims: to allow citizens to petition for a referendum on any issue by collecting a certain number of signatures; to allow politicians to be removed if they are not performing; and to create “realistic economic choices” based on public debate.

Although it has been in existence for over two years, it only last month become an official party on the State’s register of political parties, which requires 300 members.

Party founder Raymond Whitehead stressed that it was a “political service” rather than a party and wanted to “transform the political system” from a representative democracy to direct democracy.

The organisation has built up a network of “several hundred supporters”, with two offices in Dublin, one in Kildare and a head office in Trim, Co Meath.

The party is not “left or right but about balance”, party member Ben Gilroy said as he invited people and groups to join.

Mr Gilroy said if there had been direct democracy the “bailout would never have happened”.

As you all may have read, we ran an article yesterday concerning the launch of Ireland’s newest political service, Direct Democracy Ireland. On the same day, Ben Gilroy travelled down to LMFM’s home town of Drogheda to give an interview on that same topic.

Over the course of the interview Ben and the radio host discussed the topic of the bailout of the bondholders in the Irish banks, and what would have happened had Articles 47 and 48 of the Constitution not been illegally removed 75 years ago.

On the night of the government’s secret bank guarantee Brian Lenihan would not have been able to sign off on the bailout. He would not have had the authority to indebt the people of the country to the banks in the sum of €64,000,000,000. Instead he would have simply told the people who allegedly persuaded him, that Ireland had a system called Direct Democracy and that in that system the government had a lawful duty call within days for a referendum to decide on this matter.

Ben and the host of course cover the topic of bank loans, and the general trials that People For Economic Justice find ourselves in. The host of LMFM reels at the news that far from being in possession of a mortgage contract with the defendant, that the bank in fact sold on those contracts, in batches numbering in the thousands, years beforehand. This practice as we all know is called Securitization.

In other news covered in interview, Ben won two cases last week in the Masters Court. He did this by challenging the court on its Subject Matter Jurisdiction. There are four legs to Subject Matter Jurisdiction. Without all four, the court cannot proceed. They are: The plaintiff  the defendant, the judge, and a competent witness. Can the bank provide a competent witness? Someone who directly witnessed the signing of the contract between the defendant and plaintiff? No so far anyway…