BERTIE AHERN TO ADOPT MAFIA “MENTALLY INCOMPETENT” DEFENCE
Mar 22nd, 2008 by Conor McCabe
The Irish Independent revealed today that the Taoiseach will tell the Mahon tribunal that he converted his salary cheques into sterling, and then back into punts, before lodging them into the three accounts he kept at the Permanent TSB branch in Drumcondra. This is in response to Grainne Carruth’s devastating evidence to the Mahon Tribunal on 20 March that she deposited £15,500 of sterling into the Taoiseach’s account.
An outline of Mr Ahern’s planned new strategy was provided yesterday by a highly-placed source. But he declined to specify why the Taoiseach would convert Irish cheques into sterling, then reconvert them to Irish pounds and lodge them, after paying foreign exchange charges and commissions on each transaction.“There are perfectly legitimate reasons why things happened the way they did,” the source insisted.
The move is reminiscent of mafia crime boss Vincent ‘the chin’ Gigante, also known as ‘The Oddfather’ of New York. For years Gigante feigned mental incompetence in an attempt to avoid prosecution. “He became a familiar sight [in New York], wandering around the streets of Greenwich Village, a shabby, demented old man. Dressed in striped pyjamas, slippers and a royal blue robe, grinning and talking to himself and looking like an injured old bird. “God is my lawyer,” he told a psychiatrist. “He will defend me.”(*)
The Taoiseach has played the eccentric defense card before, with some success. In December 2007 he was asked at the Mahon Tribunal why he did not have a bank account between 1987 and 1993. He replied that he “wanted to do it that way.”
There is nothing in the law or the Constitution that you should . . . Some people put yellow in their hair, some people wear rings in their nose . . . I decided to cash my cheques, full stop.”
The latest move is part of that same defense plan - to treat the Taoiseach as an eccentric, given to bouts of mentally incompetent behaviour. The Taoiseach knows that the Mahon tribunal did not accept it, but he’s not worried about that. He knows that once the public accept it, he’ll survive.
The Taoiseach also knows that his coalition partners, the Greens and the PDs, will accept his “Oddfather” defense without dissent.
It’s a high risk strategy, because it’s one thing to be the mentally incompetent ‘Oddfather’ who lives down the street, another to be the mentally incompetent ‘Oddfather’ who’s in charge of a country in the midst of an economic downturn.
The Taoiseach is due to return to the Tribunal in May.
Pity Bush and Blair didn’t consult Bertie before invading Iraq. There would have been no need for dodgy dosiers.
“Some people put yellow in their hair, some people wear rings in their nose . . . I decided to invade Iraq, full stop.”
Well FPL, I’m sure it’d the line of defence Hitler would’ve pleaded at Nuremberg too - ‘Some people put yellow in their hair…. I listen to Wagner turned up to 10 and invade Poland !!!’
Conor - are you parading around Zaragoza dressed up as a Klansman all weekend ?? Say ‘Happy Easter’ to the other Klansmen.
On this ‘mentally incompetent’ line of defence, Bertie might have found his inspiration closer to home than New York. Remember that minor gangster that trapped himself under the rubble of a pub in Ballybough that he’d just blown up with a couple of gas cylinders. He claimed he was out taking the air at 3 in the morning and the pub fell on him..
Is he the new legal adviser to Destiny’s sodgers ? What’s this his name was ??
He knows that once the public accept it, he’ll survive..
but the public don’t accept it! That’s to say, they don’t accept it as a valid explanation. If you mean they ‘take it’ or allow it, then yes, I suppose they do.
I think that Bertie’s strategy isn’t one that is all that solid. Essentially he’s deciding to keep spinning them and hope that nothing incontrovertible emerges to hang him. Carruth’s evidence was devastating in that it shows up Bertie’s story as a pile of …. but as yet, nothing has emerged to link Bertie’s inexplicable money movements to anything untoward. Having said that, his credibility has been so horrendously undermined that he should be forced out of office. It says it all about our political culture that this hasn’t happened.
God when will he be made to resign? What can we do, he is giving us the finger and laughing all the way to the bank (pardon the pun). He will serve out his term then go on to a lucrative job in the EU and Ireland will be a laughing stock in the world. HELP!!!!!
So true Kathie. So true.