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Allister speaks at Bangor Grammar

18 December 2009

Speaking to 6th Formers in Bangor Grammar, TUV Leader Jim Allister QC spoke of his vision of a Northern Ireland enjoying the basic democratic rights taken for granted in every other western democracy: the right to vote a party out of office and the right to have an Opposition. Until these rights are restored Stormont will never work, nor last, warned Mr Allister. “These are not optional extras, they are the essence of durable democracy.”

In the course of his remarks Mr Allister said:-

“In democracies governments are expected to not only govern, but deliver. When they fail to do so they inevitably are ushered out of office by the electorate. Why, because in a workable and credible system of democracy voters have the right to vote a party, or parties, out of power; itself an incentive for good government.

“Imagine a farcical regime like our Stormont Shambles anywhere else in the democratic world, Zimbabwe apart, and without a doubt it would be given its marching orders by the people. This DUP/Sinn Fein regime could not survive anywhere else in the world: its demonstrable failure, the derision it evokes and its calamitous dysfunctionalism would earn it short shrift. Yet, tragically here it bungles on from one bad tempered crisis to another, safe in the knowledge that the iniquity of mandatory coalition cocoons it from a democratic Waterloo.

“If ever the people of Northern Ireland deserved an Opposition and the right to vote parties out of office, it is now. Yet, the mischief done to democracy by mandatory coalition means we are the only place in the western world denied those fundamental rights. This must change and change irreversibly.

“When this miserable, failed Executive falls, or cannot be put together again after the next Assembly election, then the top priority in any new negotiations must be reversing the democratic deficit by restoring the universal right to vote a party out of office and the right to have an Opposition: they are the antidote to the crippling failure of the present unworkable experiment. Thus an end to mandatory coalition is a pre-requisite for progress.

“If devolution cannot be attained which respects these fundamentals of democracy then, as the last 30 months demonstrates, it is not worth having. But, I believe, it can be achieved because the next election will produce sufficient Traditional Unionist MLAs refusing to work mandatory coalition that it will crumble and die. We will be the catalyst for change which will make all parties choose between voluntary coalition and no coalition, between democratic devolution and redundancy.

“Just as TUV has been Unionists’ insurance policy against runaway concessions, including over policing and justice, so, we will be the vehicle that will compel change in Stormont. We are not narrow-minded diehards, but defenders of democracy; the backwoodsmen are those who combine to deny the fundamental rights to vote parties out and have an Opposition. We do not dwell in the dark cave of mandatory coalition, but in the light that respects democracy and desires for Northern Ireland a workable coalition of choice not compulsion.”

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NI politics