Monday 10 January 2011

Anonymous on Fine Gael's election website

The main Irish opposition party's election website has been the subject of some controversy (it is hosted from Miami, rather than employing Irish developers), and now someone inserted an Anonymous image yesterday with the words:

"Nothing is safe, you put your faith in this political party and they take no measures to protect you.

They offer you free speech yet they censor your voice.

WAKE UP!"


(Originally discovered over at Politics.ie; hat-tip Maman Poulet. It looks like it was a link).

The site is down at the time of writing, with a holding message in place.

The new website had been set up to ask voters what they thought is wrong in Ireland, and what they would suggest to solve the problems. Clearly the idea was to reach out to voters and to portray Fine Gael as the party that listens, but taking down the party's policies to open up a debate on its website - one supposed to influence policy - damages Fine Gael's image as the party that has been producing researched policy up to now. It's well meaning, but a bad electoral move in my opinion. The point of a political party is to present a platform from an ideological perspective that they believe will improve things. When the biggest question mark over Fine Gael is whether Edna Kenny would be a good leader, this gives the appearance that Fine Gael simply want to become the next managers of Ireland, without any core beliefs, whatever the true situation may be.

This new website has turned out to be a lot of trouble this week.

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