Varadkar Is Using Covid-19 For A Shameless Power Grab
Just eight weeks ago Fine Gael declared that is was preparing to go into opposition. In the words of Leo Varadkar, “the onus is on them (the other political parties) to form a government, not us”. On February 17th he told a Fine Gael parliamentary party meeting that he “relishes the challenge” of leading “a strong and effective” opposition.
When the first Irish Covid-19 case was identified just two weeks later, Varadkar immediately saw it as a opportunity for him to retain power for another five years. And ever since he has used the crisis to try to re-shape his public image from that of a failed, caretaker Taoiseach to that of a war-time leader stepping into the breach.
While the other political parties in Leinster House have chosen not to make political capital out of the Covid-19 crisis, Fine Gael has shown no such scruples.
Instead Varadkar and his fellow Fine Gael Ministers have used prime-time national addresses, carefully managed photo opportunities, daily press conferences and rolling media interviews to present themselves as a legitimate government fighting a deadly new enemy.
A smiling Leo Varadkar poses for photos in the Citywest Conference Centre as workers convert it into a temporary Covid-19 hospital.
On March 16th he told the nation that he expected there to be be 15,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19 by April 1st, in the full knowledge that it was logistically impossible for the necessary amount of testing to be completed by that date.
In doing so he set the stage to claim a victory for his own leadership two weeks later, when the predicted 15,000 cases failed to materialise.
Another cynical stunt saw Varadkar gain global headlines for re-registering as a medical practitioner so that he could allegedly join the fight against Covid-19. In reality he took to a telephone line and not the actual front line where real heroes were risking their lives without the correct PPE .
Varadkar’s true agenda was exposed by the speed and ferocity with which he shot down the idea of a temporary “national government” to coordinate the fight against the virus. His real objective is not the defeat of the virus, but five more years of power.
Varadkar is many things, but stupid isn’t one of them. He has skillfully used a national crisis to advance himself and his political party. The decision of other political parties to refrain from the usual criticism of government has been viewed as a weakness to be exploited in the battle for power.
No longer are Fine Gael “preparing for opposition”. Buoyed up by recent opinion polls they are now preparing for another five years in power, alongside their ideological bed-fellows in Fianna Fail.
The only question that remains to be answered is which of the smaller parties and independents will make up the numbers to facilitate another five years of capitalist ‘solutions’ to the emergent global recession.
The ‘opposition' parties in Leinster House seem to think it unpatriotic to attack Fine Gael at a time when they are allegedly leading the fight against Covid-19. Nothing could be further from the truth.
It was Fine Gael that failed to make any meaningful preparation for an inevitable pandemic. And it was Fine Gael that chronically underfunded and mismanaged our health services for the last decade - a failure that has left our nurses, doctors, carers and other front-liners without the armour or weapons that they need to effectively fight Covid-19.
Éirígí For A New Republic has never shied away from speaking truth to power in the past and we won’t do it now. Fine Gael’s shameless grab for power must be exposed and challenged, regardless of the context within which it is happening. A failure do so so would be a failure to act in the true national interest.