ALLISTER WARNS DUP AGAINST CLIMBDOWN
06 October 2008
Statement by Traditional Unionist Leader Jim Allister MEP:
With either Sinn Fein or the DUP required to blink to end the present impasse at Stormont, is the DUP preparing to climb down? I hope not, but the fact that at last Monday’s Assembly Group meeting, for the first time, voices, albeit a minority, were raised urging that they get on with devolving policing and justice, is a worrying sign. Just as in the UUP, when it was in control, there were those willing to put retention of position above deeper interests, so, within the DUP, I fear, there are those willing to pay the Sinn Fein price.
There can and should be no compromise on policing and justice. As the law stands the moment these powers are devolved, Martin McGuinness instantly gets his hands on the levers of power over the Judiciary. McGuinness having a say in recommending who our Lord Chief Justice should be, who our Lord Justices of Appeal would be, who should be Attorney General, who should sit on the Judicial Appointments Commission, what judges should be removed and who should sit on the Policing Board, would be an obscenity, which no Unionist should ever countenance. Thus the line must be held to remove every last one of those powers out of OFMDFM and away from any malevolent IRA/Sinn Fein influence.
Rather than contemplate feeding the insatiable demands of Sinn Fein, Unionists, of all shades, should unite to face the reality that mandatory coalition has failed again and can never succeed. As I said last week:-
"It should be no surprise to any thinking person that mandatory coalition has failed again. It is an unworkable system of government because it is based not, as coalition anywhere else, on an agreed platform but on mutually exclusive agendas and mutual vetoes. Thus deadlock, particularly where one party has a vested interest in ensuring Northern Ireland as a British entity is ungovernable.
Mandatory coalition has been tried for 10 years and has spectacularly failed every time. We can't afford to go on headbanging against this wall upon which Sinn Fein has plainly written "IRA Rule OK".
It is time for the DUP to face reality. They've tried what the government wanted, it doesn't work. Now is the time to unitedly go to government and tell them straight "mandatory coalition is over, finished, failed. If devolution is to return it can only be on the basis of voluntary coalition and then those genuinely interested in good government for Northern Ireland can move ahead, leaving the Sinn Fein wreckers behind."
Now, is the time for Peter Robinson to act. It's either that or bend over so far backwards to appease the unappeaseable as to be walked all over by a Sinn Fein that never had any intention of bringing stability and good government to this province of the UK"
