| Fine Gael launch billboard broadside on
Tánaiste FINE Gael will this month launch the most direct attack
campaign in modern Irish electoral history with billboard posters deliberately
targeting Tánaiste Michael McDowell.
In a daring departure from convention the Fine Gael billboards will parody
a government poster and feature an image of Mr McDowell.
Under a sarcastic slogan Everything is just Great! it will claim that
murder rates, rapes and gun crimes have all increased during the Justice
Minister’s term while detection rates have gone down.
The bold move is reminiscent of attack’ campaigns like the Tony
Blair Demon Eyes poster in Britain in 1997.
Such tactics have never been used so bluntly in Ireland before.
As yet Fine Gael will not say if the McDowell poster is a one-off or part
of a more protracted campaign that will single out controversial or unpopular
government Ministers such as Mary Harney and Martin Cullen.
Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny said: “Health and crime show up in the
polls as being the most serious issues with people.
“The time for pussyfooting on this is over. The government have
had 10 years on their own targets and objectives and they have failed
miserably.
“My belief politically is that in this next election people want
change. Instead of having a government of ambivalence and failure, we
will have a government of integrity where public services will be at its
core.”
The bold initiative will form part of the first substantial move of the
electoral campaign by Fine Gael.
It will lead into a series of nationwide rallies featuring party leader
Mr Kenny in what could be the most divisive General Election since the
late 1980s.
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