TUV is DUP's abandoned conscience
27 March 2010
Speaking in Newtownards to a Strangford and North Down TUV fund-raising dinner, Jim Allister QC answered the attack launched on his party on Thursday by Peter Robinson in the Waterfront Hall.
In the course of his remarks Mr Allister said:-
“For someone in line for the ‘Well done Peter’ accolade from Gerry Adams, the DUP leader has a brass neck to try and paint others, particularly the only party opposed to terrorists in government, as the friends of Sinn Fein.
“No unionist has done more to advance the Sinn Fein agenda than Peter David Robinson. He masterminded the DUP’s obliging delivery of IRA/Sinn Fein into the very heart and top of government, for the sake of sustaining that miserable, failing government he has sat back and allowed Ruane to continue her unfettered rampage through education and lately at Hillsborough he gifted wrapped the empowerment of the organisation that murdered policemen and judges on policing and justice with promises on the Irish language and more north/southery. David Trimble’s shoes as the Sinn Fein delivery boy have never been better filled.
“Not satisfied with all that he devised his first great ‘clever device’ of allowing through, without a squeak of DUP protest, the legislative change which now permits McGuinness to be First Minister. Thinking thereby he could coerce and scare unionists into voting DUP, to his shame, he sold the unionist title deeds to the First Minister’s Office. Hence not one DUP speech, not one amendment against that monstrous legislative change when it passed through Parliament in November 2006.
“He likes to think of himself as a great strategist. I’m sure Gerry and Marty would agree.
“Just look where he has brought us: 3 convicted terrorists as government ministers, the most malfunctioning government in Western Europe, a poisonous veto on every issue, to which policing and justice is now to be added, our prized education system reduced to a shambles and parity with North Korea in running a parliament and government without an Opposition.
“TUV, on the other hand, desires durable, workable devolution, which requires abandonment of the iniquity of mandatory coalition and admission to government only through the regular process whereby those parties who can agree a programme for government, which commands the necessary Assembly majority, proceed to govern and those who can’t, be they TUV, DUP, Sinn Fein or whoever, fulfil the vital role of Opposition. Only then will devolution go forward in Northern Ireland and begin delivering. Till then, it will be moribund, failing and useless.
“Asking for the same basic democratic procedures which apply everywhere else in the democratic world is both reasonable and right. It is those who insist in being in government as of right – and those who pander to them by operating that absurd system - and in denying the electorate the right to either vote a party out of government or have an Opposition who are the proponents of extremist politics.
“It is neither extreme nor idealistic to insist on voluntary coalition as the route to shared and workable government. However, it is symptomatic of how far our society has been perverted by the undemocratic architecture of the Belfast Agreement that to make such a basic democratic demand draws ridicule, primarily, of course, from those who are finding it profitable to now work the systems and structures of an Agreement they once repudiated and derided.
“TUV, however, will not be deflected from our pursuit of a return to basic democratic standards and processes in Northern Ireland. When we draw the fury that the DUP used to direct at republicanism, -but they are now the governmental partners of IRA/Sinn Fein - then we know that it is because TUV is pricking their abandoned conscience.”
