Innocent victims cynically led up the garden path - Allister
10 December 2010
Statement by TUV Leader Jim Allister:-
Ever since the DUP brought IRA/Sinn Fein into government in 2007 they have been promising, particularly at the approach of every election, that they were about to correct the monstrous definition of a ‘victim’, which equates the innocent victim with the perpetrator. Equally, I warned that this was a con because their partner would assuredly use the veto gifted to them by the DUP to block such a just and necessary move.
After years of prevaricating the DUP produced, not a government, but a Private member’s Bill suggesting the change. Now, true to form, Sinn Fein has blocked it through the ‘petition of concern’ device.
The DUP always knew this would happen, because they knew that in their rush to power they bestowed this veto on republicanism, nonetheless since 2007 for electoral reasons they were prepared to deceive the innocent victims sector into believing they could and would deliver them justice. Instead, as I warned, they have merely delivered Sinn Fein rule on this most vital and defining of issues.
The fact that an innocent victim continues to be equated with the murdering scum who made him/her a victim epitomises not just the abject failure of this Stormont but the amoral ambit within which it operates. Devolution which cannot deliver justice on this basic issue, and instead sees preferential funding poured into republican prisoner groups, is devolution that has failed. A failure made all the more poignant by the deception of those who pretended they could deliver, knowing full well they would not.
It is no surprise that the party of victim makers, Sinn Fein, would do what they’ve done, though no less despicable, but it is the innocent victims who, again, are the losers here, bringing its own fresh glee to their killers.
