Spreading rumours only tip of dirty tricks iceberg

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

Dirty tricks are part and parcel of election campaigns. Blackening the name of your opponent – and doing it surreptitiously, obviously – forms part of the election strategies of some candidates seeking power and high office.

General Elections are usually dirtier because the stakes are higher, but the local election candidates and wannabe councillors can get down and dirty with the best of the Dáil hopefuls. They’re worse when they put their minds to it!

Some dirty tricks aren’t that dirty. Like telling people on the doorsteps that ‘such and such’ a candidate is safe, and that your seat is in trouble.

It’s backhanded but hardly criminal. This type of trick usually comes from a colleague within your own party and shows that the internal battle is as vicious as the fighting between political parties.

Misrepresenting opponents’ views is another dirty trick essential to any smearing politicians’ armoury – there’s nothing like spreading a false rumour that an opponent supports a Traveller encampment being built in the local green area, to get the electorate’s backs up.

The dirty trickster who started the rumour can sit back and watch the subject of the rumour back-track and tie himself or herself up in knots because when you’re explaining in politics you’re losing. It’s textbook dirty tricks. 

Then there’s the tricksters who deface and steal opponents’ campaign posters. Election posters cost a fortune to replace and the graffiti strewn on them by dirty tricksters can often be derogatory, and even defamatory. Again, so far, so very run of the mill. 

We’ll probably return to the subject of political skulduggery between now and the locals scheduled for next year (God knows there should be enough of it going on) but we thought we’d remind you of two Galway dirty tricks of recent elections:

1. Malicious messages

The following text message was ‘doing the rounds’ among Fianna Fáil supporters in Galway on the Sunday prior to the 2011 General Election polling day.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Sentinel.