Jim Allister responds to Ian Paisley standing down
02 March 2010
Responding to news that Ian Paisley senior was not seeking re-election in North Antrim, TUV Leader and parliamentary candidate, Jim Allister QC, said:-
“It is not surprising that Ian Paisley Snr at 83 is retiring. Whatever his achievements in earlier years as a towering parliamentarian, in this parliament he was not giving North Antrim the voice it needed, turning up for only 18% of the votes. For one who once championed traditional unionism – with such colourful pledges as Sinn Fein only getting into government over his dead body -, sadly his abiding legacy will be of bequeathing
“But, going forward, a seminal issue will be who can now give North Antrim the voice and representation which it needs, and, in that my 96% attendance record in Europe over my 5 years as MEP and being graded by the independent Taxpayers Alliance as the top performing MEP from the whole of the UK, will stand me in good stead.
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· at a time when IRA victims were fighting for compensation from Libya, over Gaddafi supplying semtex and weapons to the IRA, judged it right to approve the sending of PSNI officers to train Gaddafi’s militia. Mr Paisley’s colleague Nigel Dodds MP rightly condemned the decision and questioned what planet the maker of such an offensive decision lived on! If his judgement is questioned even by party colleagues, why should North Antrim vote for him?
· judged it appropriate to try and deflect questions about his relationship with Seymour Sweeney by saying “I know of him!”, whereas the Assembly Standards Commissioner, who found the relationship involved ‘recreational, social and political contacts together with property dealings’, said he should have declared his connection with Sweeney in the Assembly’s register of interests.
· judged it appropriate at St Andrews to waste valuable negotiating leverage on pushing pet projects.
So, I look forward to the campaign in North Antrim, believing that a constituency which for decades has shown its attachment to the tested and tried principles of traditional unionism will continue that affinity, despite its outgoing MP having spectularly abandoned them to give us the chuckle routine with IRA leader McGuinness.
