Allister answers back in Lurgan: “It’s the disastrous joint authority of DUP/Sinn Fein rule which concerns Unionists"
25 November 2009
In a speech to TUV members in Upper Bann on Tuesday night, TUV leader Jim Allister QC hit back at attacks on his party at the DUP Conference last weekend. Focusing in on Peter Robinson’s statement that bringing down his DUP/Sinn Fein coalition would be “wicked beyond belief”, Mr Allister rounded on the DUP as having delivered wickedness in high places through elevating Sinn Fein to the highest offices in the land and retorting to jibes about mythical ‘joint authority’ he said it was the present disastrous Joint Authority with Sinn Fein at Stormont which was the real and present threat of the moment.
In the course of his remarks Mr Allister said:-
“Mr Robinson had much to say at the weekend about TUV; in fact if it weren’t for attacking TUV his would have been a very short speech indeed, certainly it contained no attack, none whatever, on IRA/Sinn Fein, but then today they are his partners and we are the enemy. Why? Because we dare to stand up for principles he himself once espoused: no terrorists in government; no rigged devolution and the fundamental democratic right to vote a party out of office: thus, as David Simpson put it in his 2005 Manifesto, when he ousted David Trimble, whose policies the DUP now implements, “MANDATORY COALITION IS OUT OF THE QUESTION”.
“The extent to which the DUP has lost its moral compass was vividly illustrated by Peter Robinson’s conference declaration that it would be “WICKED beyond belief” to bring down his terrorist-inclusive coalition. Let me tell you Mr Robinson what is WICKED. It is wicked and both morally and politically wrong to put at the top and heart of government in Northern Ireland those who through the worst excesses of wickedness bombed and butchered the innocent of this Province. That, sadly is the Paisley/Robinson legacy: the elevation of wickedness to high places.
“Martin McGuinness is the personification of the IRA’s wicked campaign. He is a wicked and evil man, something Peter Robinson used to know and believe when he exposed him in all his depravity in a speech in the Assembly in 2001.
“Now, he is shackled to him as his buddy in government, unable to even sign a letter as First Minister without McGuinness’ permission. So besotted with the pseudo power and ego of the Joint First Minister’s office, the DUP leader, like his predecessor, now sees evil as good and good as evil. So TUV, not Sinn Fein, is now the enemy. This is the topsy-turvy world inhabited by new DUP, where little else matters beside clinging to office, even that beholden to and besmirched by terrorists.
“The muddled thinking that justifies this stance now embraces the contention that it’s better to trust the sworn enemies of Ulster, IRA/Sinn Fein, than trust “the Brits”. Hence Peter’s public renewal of his vows with Sinn Fein. Wedded in government with the IRA is a sorry epitaph for those once pledged to smash Sinn Fein. Now, it’s smash TUV: well, if they are as successful at that as they’ve been against Sinn Fein, then, our future is assured.
“But it’s not TUV’s future which matters, its Ulster’s destiny that concerns us. Actual and disastrous joint authority with IRA/Sinn Fein is the reality of the moment, courtesy of the DUP’s lust for power, any power, even that which comes from holding the bloodstained hand of Sinn Fein. It is this which TUV unapologetically is pledged to oppose.
“Yes, we do not believe Sinn Fein is fit for government. Yes, they are elected, but, as anywhere else in the world, any minority party should only have access to government if they can persuade other parties to form a coalition with them. But in Northern Ireland we have this absurdity of mandatory coalition whereby a party can never be voted out of office. Mandatory coalition exists not to protect democrats or unionists but to guarantee Sinn Fein a place in the government of the state they are dedicated to destroy. Such perversion of democracy is wrong and has to go. Sinn Fein must like everyone else, live by the basic rules of democracy. If they are only democrats so long as they are in government, they are not democrats at all.
“So, without apology TUV is dedicated to the destruction of mandatory coalition. We are not opposed to partnership government, but we are irreversibly opposed to terrorists in government and the system of mandatory coalition specifically designed to keep them in government. Voluntary coalition we accept, mandatory coalition we eschew.
“It is a deception for Peter Robinson, David Simpson and others to pretend that by working mandatory coalition they will in fact change it. The deception lies in the legal reality that at St Andrews Sinn Fein was delivered a veto on any review changing the present system. Thus, only by bringing the present failed system to its knees, by the election of sufficient TUV MLAs refusing to operate mandatory coalition, will change be forced in negotiations which will flow from the inability to operate a system from which a sufficient quantity of Unionists have withdrawn their consent.
“The democratic imperative against mandatory coalition is unanswerable; it is those who operate it which are keeping its life support switched on.”
