W.H.O. treaty
Dear Editor,
Last week your paper published an article regards Billy Kelleher and his warnings of a “new campaign, based on falsehoods, to oppose WHO pandemic treaty”.
For those who don’t know, the WHO (World Health Organisation) are drafting a treaty at this moment in time to deal with “future pandemics”. Basically what the WHO want with this treaty is the power to take control when a worldwide pandemic is called, in the countries who sign up to this treaty. What the signatories of this treaty are doing is basically agreeing to the handing over of huge power in a time of a “pandemic” to the WHO, to implement whatever rules, regulations and tactics they see fit. Much like the power that the government handed to NPHET during Covid times only next time it would be the WHO calling the shots and the government would have very little say.
As anybody can see this is extremely dangerous, totally undemocratic and absolutely wreckless for any minister to suggest doing something like this. Democracy - the word itself means people rule. When you have an organisation, like the WHO, who are unelectable, totally unaccountable and who have huge conflicts of interest within the organisation and who then have total control over a country’s health decisions in a time of a “pandemic”, you can surely see that the people at that time have absolutely no power, they do not rule and that democracy then, at that most important time in that country, is non-existent.
There are huge questions to be asked here before even contemplating signing this treaty. One major one is, can this treaty be signed without a referendum. The answer to this is no, as it would be totally unconstitutional. Even still though, health minister Stephen Donnelly has said he would sign the treaty. Billy Kelleher stated in this paper’s article last week “that I fully trust the Department of Health to scrutinise this proposed treaty”. Stephen Donnelly has not even read the treaty but already has committed to signing it!
Our Taoiseach when questioned by our local TD here in TheAvondhu area, Mattie McGrath (by the way one of the only TDs questioning anything of real importance at the moment in Dail Eireann, and one of the only TDs speaking any common sense in that chamber these days - thank you Mattie) on the matter, said and I quote: “I happen to be a strong supporter of the World Health Organisation, I think we should enhance and increase its capacity to deal with pandemics”. Imagine this coming from the leader of our country! It sounds like as leader, he wants to abdicate all responsibility during times of a “pandemic”.
Remember as well, Billy Kelleher was one of the first to promote vaccine passports to travel within the EU. Remember he promised us they would be used short term and never be used domestically. Remember he said back then that was a falsehood, mistruth and conspiracy when people said the vaccine passports would be used domestically. He assured us that would never happen. Was he lying then! Is he lying now? I’ll leave that up to you.
Many of us have had different opinions around Covid, lockdowns, etc. but surely we can agree that the handing over of much of our country’s sovereignty and rights to the WHO is a huge step too far. You are not “anti vax” if you take this position as Billy Kelleher suggests. You are pro-democracy!
We surely can see that we in this country must always be in control of our own destiny, our own decisions. It’s what our ancestor’s sacrificed so much for over 100 years ago. Let’s not sit back and watch what they sacrificed so much for, slowly be handed away to an organisations like the WHO.
As Michael Collins once said “With freedom comes responsibility”. Let’s not listen to Billy Kelleher or Micheal Martin who want to take no responsibility for their country and instead want to hand much of their country’s sovereignty away, but listen to a real Cork man. Let’s listen to Michael Collins and take back and own our responsibilities!
Thank you, Peter O’Donoghue,
Watergrasshill.