HOT on the heels of their election breakthrough in Limerick after winning three council seats, the Anti Austerity Alliance are organising a major public meeting next Tuesday, June 3 to launch a campaign against water charges
Newly elected councillor Cian Prendiville maintains that the Anti Austerity Alliance is now a major force in Limerick politics and he is appealing to the thousands of people who voted for the AAA to join the party and help build what he describes as “a new political voice”.
“With the Labour Party finished as any sort of voice for workers and the unemployed, we think there needs to be a new organisation built specifically with the aim of representing and organising the 99 per cent of the population who are marginalised by the existing political establishment,” said Cllr Prendiville.
The Anti-Austerity Alliance claims that their strong showing in the local elections demonstrated that water charges have been “decisively rejected” by the electorate. They have pledged to organise a campaign of “civil disobedience and non-payment if the government ignores the message sent in the local, euro and by elections”.
Cllr Paul Keller maintains that the AAA breakthrough in Limerick Council and the Dublin West by-election, combined with the surge towards Sinn Fein and independents nationally, shows that the Government have no mandate for further austerity and for the new water tax.
“They seem deternined to ignore that message, so therefore our task is to turn the protest vote into a protest movement,” said Cllr Keller.
The AAA has also pledged to give full support to residents who organise local resistance to the installation of water meters.
They are calling on Sinn Fein to join them in building a mass community-based boycott campaign against the water tax and to explicitly call on people to refuse to pay this latest austerity measure.
