43,000 reasons why Stormont won't reform
08 June 2011
The following is a speech by TUV leader Jim Allister MLA during Monday’s debate in the Assembly on the reform of government structures.
"The governmental arrangements in Northern Ireland are a blot upon the democratic landscape of the Western World. I pretty much guarantee that, if I were to ask any class of public affairs students aged 12 to name two things that denoted democracy, they would say: the right in an election to change your government, and the right to have an opposition. Those are two of the most fundamental tenets that operate anywhere across the democratic world — anywhere except Northern Ireland. That is why I say that these arrangements are a blot upon the democratic landscape.
"We have just had an election. Oh yes, you can have an election, but you cannot change your government. You dare not have an opposition. You arrive at the farcical situation where all parties are in government, and then we are told by some person in this debate that you have vigorous scrutiny Committees. Those vigorous scrutiny Committees are composed of Government MLAs. Nine of the 12 Committees are controlled exclusively and occupied and populated only by Government MLAs. The cabal that controls the House made sure that the three MLAs outside of that body of governmental parties did not get on any of the Committees that matter.
"Do not let anyone come to this House and talk about the principles of democracy when they are the practitioners of the antithesis of democracy and live by the suppression of democracy. They cannot even accommodate the basic fundamental concept that, in a democracy, you must have — it is not optional — the right to an opposition. Of course, those who oppose it most are the associates of those who used to deal with opposition with a bullet in the back of the head, and they are still of that totalitarian mindset in saying that there will not be an opposition.
"Then there are those who pretend — yes, pretend — that it is all going to change, when they know that they have signed up for an arrangement that guarantees that it will not change, because they have signed up for a review that delivers a veto to the very totalitarians who say that there will never be an opposition. Yet, they come to the House and mouth platitudes about wanting to see an opposition, an end to mandatory coalition, voluntary coalition and basic democracy operating when they know full well that everything that they have signed up to in the Belfast Agreement guarantees that that will not happen.
"Yet one of them, the Member who spoke previously, can write in Saturday’s ‘News Letter’ pretending that the Belfast Agreement is a thing of history, when it is a living history and a living act that he, as the Whip of his party, implements and enforces every day of the week, because all the architecture of the Belfast Agreement is that which holds up this very anti-democratic structure.
"Of course, there are 43,000 very good reasons why these structures will not change. Many Members of this House know that, if they rock the boat or disturb the equilibrium, there will be nobody outside this House foolish enough to pay them anything like a salary of £43,000. Well they know it. That is what motivates, what drives and what feeds the pretence. They say: yes, we want change; yes, we want an opposition; yes, we have created structures that could bring it about. However, they never tell the truth that they have delivered the veto to the anti-democrats who will never allow it to happen, and, therefore, they sit happily and merrily propping up the very system that they made careers out of attacking. The very system that they belittled the Ulster Unionist Party for creating, they now operate with the gusto of the salary that comes with it. So, it is a shame that we are putting upon the Province structures and operations that are utterly undemocratic, and those who keep them in place will never have the bottle to face down those who say they must stay. That is the harsh reality, and they know it."
