TUV has destabilised the cosy DUP/Sinn Fein axis - Allister
11 December 2009
Extract from a speech by TUV Leader Jim Allister QC to the annual dinner of South Antrim TUV.
“It is just 2 years this week since TUV was launched. Our success and progress has been remarkable. As the abandoned conscience of others our presence greatly curtails their freedom of movement and has saved Northern Ireland from the disastrous folly of a headlong rush into empowering Sinn Fein on policing and justice.
“Make no mistake about it, if TUV did not exist Martin McGuinness and Gerry Kelly would already be meddling, through a Sinn Fein executive veto, in the affairs of policing and justice. We are indeed proving to be the Unionist community’s best possible insurance policy. Mandatory coalition is teetering because the voice of Traditional Unionists has destabilised the cosy DUP/Sinn Fein axis essential to its survival. It is the heat and gravitational pull of traditional unionism which has the DUP/Sinn Fein coalition in meltdown.
“Let it melt, I say. The sooner we are rid of this contemptible useless government, the better. Who would miss it, apart from the political elite who live off it? Certainly, the parentS and pupils distraught by the shambles in education would shed no tears, nor the hard-working families whose taxes fund the bloated bureaucracy and political industry that is the present disreputable Stormont. What has this Stormont done for anyone? Precious little!
“It needs not just reform, it needs transformed: transformed from a place where democracy is debased through the iniquity of mandatory coalition to a system where you have the basic rights to vote a party out of office and to have an Opposition. The bare essentials for progress are that it is stripped of its mutual vetoes and the unworkable office of Joint First Ministers and rid of the guarantee of terrorists in government. Government must be formed by consensus not compulsion; operated by an agreed programme not gridlocked by reciprocal vetoes.
“Soon, the electorate again will have the opportunity to give their verdict on Stormont and on the double and triple jobbers who populate it. Here in South Antrim we look forward to that exercise of calling to account a part-time MP who when he last stood for Parliament pledged mandatory coalition which included Sinn Fein was ‘OUT OF THE QUESTION’, promised us ‘COMPLETE VISIBLE, VERIFIABLE DECOMMISSIONING’, but who was one of those, in breach of such solemn pledges, to give us Army Council supremo McGuinness as Joint First Minister. As for visible decommissioning he forgot about that as quick as he got over his bad stomach. Soon spending taxpayers money on a lavish walnut desk was much more important.
“Well, Mr McCrea your day of reckoning is coming in this constituency and we’ll be there to hold you to account.”
