Unity challenge in marginal seats
17 December 2009
TUV Leader Jim Allister has intervened in the row between the DUP and UUP over the marginal seats of South Belfast and Fermanagh & South Tyrone to call for all-party unionist support for a single non-party candidate in each constituency. Believing party candidates will never command enough support to win and that inter-unionist competition will gift the seats to the nationalist/republican incumbents, Jim Allister is calling for an agreed non-party candidate from unionist civic society in each seat.
In a statement the TUV Leader said:-
“It is becoming increasingly clear that DUP and UUP egos and pride will again subject the people of South Belfast and Fermanagh & South Tyrone to nationalist/republican representation, or non-representation, in Parliament.
“I, therefore, repeat my call for both parties to step back and recognise that their mutual animus and grandstanding will again lose both of these seats and that the route to a unionist victory is through finding in each constituency a non-party standard-bearer who can unite the supporters of all three unionist parties. I have no doubt that within unionist civic society such unifying figures exist.
“Winning seats like South Belfast and Fermanagh & South Tyrone should not be about accumulating party trophies, it should be about ridding them of their present incumbents. Only a genuinely non-party figure in each constituency is likely to do so. Retaking these seats would be a much needed boost for all of unionism, but it can’t be done so long as party interests are put first.
“So, now is the time for magnanimity and a serious search for candidates for victory, not mere positioning so that one party or other can better its stance in the blame game: that is really what is going on at present. So I challenge the leaders of both the DUP and UUP to join with me in declaring a willingness to find and support mutually acceptable winners for these constituencies, and to be willing to suppress party ambition in pursuit of that search. I don’t think that is too much to ask.”
