President Connolly

More details about that reprehensible Nkencho criminal today.

why is Uachtarán Catherine staying silent?????

mod: warned for trolling

There is no precedent as far as I’m aware of a president commenting on criminal matters

why she has not commented on the military industrial and maniacal regime of Iran murdering 1000’s of its people is beyond me,bar the utterly stupid left wing bias towards saying as little as possible about those regimes

If Trump bombed the presidential palace in response there,she’d be out like an Olympic runner to condemn that of course and sympathise with the RG

Presidents should not be commenting on any of it IMO, except maybe in the most anodyne generic "Give peace a chance" terms…

The UN was doomed to failure once China and Russia were given permanent vetoes.

Look around the world, the period from the 1970s to the 1990s saw the biggest increase in democracy as the likes of Franco and others fell, while the collapse of the Berlin Wall saw democracy move into Eastern Europe, to the consternation of the Irish left. We are now living in an era when democracy is in retreat.

Nobody is asking Catherine Connolly to speak in any manner encouraging military intervention, I haven't seen that anywhere in the media or anywhere on social media. Ireland should be standing with democratic movements that are seeking to overthrow totalitarian regimes like those in Iran, Venezuela, Russia and others. That is all that is being asked of our President, stand with the ordinary people against the likes of the Ayatollah, Maduro and Putin. Stand against the retreat from democracy.

few and far between but nothing on the biggest government massacre of its own citizens in the same week she sympathises with maduro henchmen most of whom happen to be Cuban

I have a theory and I’d say I’m right,the hard left are soft on revolutionaries but hard on democracies

Mainly because they think the former is their main route to power

Mirror, mirror on the wall who is the fairest of them all?

It’s always great to hear from people who have the deepest knowledge of the inner working relationship of the President and the DFA as against those who continuously blow hot steamy speculative air from their rear pipe

The silence from the Park gets stranger by the day. Amnesty International, UN Human Rights organisations, European leaders, all domestic party leaders except PBP, but the President remains silent on the biggest international news of the day, the largest number of protesters killed by their own government since Tianmen Square. Incredible stuff.

The Irish hard left have a big problem when they defend Iran, Russia, Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea and others who are horrible repressive regimes.

The key word there is “in the past”. In the past Connolly was not President. Convention dictates she doesn’t comment on the remit of the executive or even the opposition.

If she did so obliquely grand she might get away with it. But if Connolly went mouthing now about Iran / Venezuela / USA etc etc myself and others would correctly wish she “stayed in her lane”.

I think you missed my point. Connolly has commented as President on the Cuban mercenaries killed in Venezuela, and she has also commented on Gaza and Sudan as President. I wasn't talking about her time before President, so that is a failed rebuttal. I have no issue with the President reflecting the views of the Irish public on matters international. She should stay out of domestic issues which are clearly the purview of the elected government.

The problem is she picks and chooses often the wrong ones to comment on internationally. Lamenting the deaths of Cuban mercenaries who died defending an evil dictator is a strange one. So too her silence on the civilians being killed by the Iranian regime. She is making the same mistakes as her predecessor, who if I recall correctly, praised the Iranian government, the one now killing its own people.

I am bemused at the lengths some are going to defend her on this.

I am comparing her sympathy for Cuban mercenaries with her lack of sympathy for the innocent civilian victims of the oppressive Iranian regime.

I know where I stand looking at both of those, I think I know where the Irish people stand looking at both of those, but Connolly appears to stand in a different place. I think that is unacceptable.

If she had kept her mouth shut about the Cuban mercenaries killed in Venezuela, then her silence on Iran wouldn't look so incongruous, but her kneejerk anti-Americanism couldn't help itself.

The Iranian rebellion is a once-in-40 years occurrence, right up there with 1989.

It is one thing to come in and defend the silence of Connolly, it is an altogether different thing to come in here and consider paid Cuban mercenaries to innocent Iranian civilians and put the Cuban mercenaries on a higher standing as you appear to do.

From what we have learned the vast vast majority of those killed in Venezuela were members of the Venezuelan military or hired criminal guns. That our President speaks out for them but not for innocent Iranian civilians is a disgrace. I can only assume that you share the same rabid anti-Americanism that pervades the far left in Ireland.

I dislike all mercenaries, Putin had a group of them committing war crimes in Ukraine before he sent them to Africa to start killing Christians. Maybe you think Cuban mercenaries and the Wagner group can be excused because they fight for the good guys like Maduro and Putin.