Trevor Sargent ... An honourable man or was his time at the trough up anyway?

Malbekh tells this perfectly on his blog http://malbekh.blogspot.com/2010/02/trevor-sargent-end-of-government-maybe.html

Over to you Malbekh ...

"Trevor Sargent - end of the government? maybe not.....
So here we are in full flow on politics.ie......

http://www.politics.ie/green-party/124396-trevor-sargent-hot-water-over-headed-notepaper-letter-garda.html

Mixed feelings here. As a previous lifelong Green supporter I've never forgiven him for going into government with FF even if he did the 'honourable' thing in resigning as leader. You see, most of the Green candates were elected on transfers from FG, Labour, SF and independent voters, if we'd seriously thought for a minute that the Greens would support the mercenaries of corruption, none of them would have been elected.

I can't help but feel however, that Sargent's attempt to influence the prosecution of the individual involved was well intentioned, out of what he and I would perceive as being a social injustice. He can't argue that he had no choice but to resign, but I actually sympathise with his position and I'm sorry that it has come to this.

How has it come to this?

The toxic horror that is the FF party is making a mockery of the Greens and everything they have previously stood for. Any Green who honestly thinks that the leaking of the letters to The Herald (of all papers - laughable) is a pure coincidence only needs to read the history books on previous FF coalitions.

This isn't funny, it's not sad, it's not a moral history lesson, it's not a parable for our children........it's a cruel, sick parody of a party that used to have a meaning and a purpose.

Of course, the main interest in this is who leaked the letters to the Evening Herald. As usual, the knee-jerk reaction was that it sounded exactly like a FF stunt.

The individual involved in the leak knows that their career, whatever their profession, is finished if their identity becomes known. Why therefore, take such a risk, particularly as the you can be certain that senior Gardaí, stung by O'Dea's accusation, will very much want to get to the bottom of this and proceed with a prosecution if applicable.

Said individual will know that as long as his identity remains intact, the suspicion of any rational person will assume that they are connected with FF.

Releasing the letters to the Evening Herald is bizarre. This would indicate that the paper was chosen because the indvidual has an acquaintance in the paper or has had some previous dealings with individual(s) in that rag.

Conclusion therefore: individual involved, angered by what had happened to O'Dea and having access to the letters - possibly from some months ago - uses the easiest and most direct option to release them.

I believe that the individual will be connected loosely to FF, I believe their identity will be known within the week, and happily, I believe the government will fall as a consequence.

O'Dea was grotesque in his actions
It's unbelievable that Sargent was be so foolish as to write those letters
The connection with the leaker will be bizarre
And the fall out for both parties will be unprecedented

Until one of the posters, lostexpectation, came up with a very plausible explanation:

could the journalist not have gotten the letter from the guy trevor tried to help, he obviously felt hard done by and had been trying to raise the matter anywhere he could, think, "contentiousness neighbour prosecuted after suffering assault!!", "you can't reprimand kids because you're afraid of the parents" but then the journalist saw another story and waiting till the case was over last week and went with the sargeant angle


Now this makes sense, it's also possible that someone with access to the letters (or copies of them) related to the constituent might have passed them on to the Gardaí. And the reasoning behind accepting this explanation goes as follows:

1. It ties in with the time line of the case
2. It explains why it was released to the Evening Herald
3. It gets around the issue as to why someone in FF would leak the letters cognisant of the allegations that would arise
4. It explains why Cowen would appear confident enough to deny the allegations

So at the moment, while I want it to be FF behind the leak or more likely someone loosely connected to FF, I'm afraid the probability is somewhat more mundane."