Allister Tells Assembly DUP are Now Belfast Agreements Chief Proponents, Chief Implementers and Chief Sustainers
10 April 2013
The following is a speech delivered by North Antrim MLA Jim Allister during yesterday’s debate on the Civic Forum:
“If I needed further reason to vote against the motion, I was supplied with it in the opening sentences from the proposer, Mr McDevitt. He reminded us that the Civic Forum, of course, is a child of the Belfast Agreement. Despite his 10 minutes of misty-eyed reflection on the Belfast Agreement, I am afraid that, with each minute that passed, he confirmed my initial view that voting against the motion would be as right as it was to vote against — as I did — the Belfast Agreement.
A Member: Are you sure that you did?
Mr Allister: I am absolutely sure that I did. More than that: I am sure that I am still against it. Some people in the House today strain at the gnat of a Civic Forum but swallowed the camel of the Belfast Agreement. They are the people who, today, try to make a virtue out of opposing the Civic Forum because it is some tangential part of Belfast Agreement.
“However, as for the Belfast Agreement itself, they are, today, its chief proponents, chief implementers and chief sustainers. All of its infrastructure, of course, remains, utterly unaltered. Its mandatory coalition, which denies people the right to change their Government; the lack of an Opposition; the terrorists in Government — all of those structures, the very things that, 15 years ago, we were told were anathema, had to be rejected and would, for ever, be resisted — are the very things, the very camel, that they swallowed.
“Yet, today, they strain at the gnat. If ever there were any doubt that they had swallowed the camel of the Belfast Agreement, we had it in the recent publication from the Assembly and Executive Review Committee, which is chaired by Mr Moutray — yes, the man who once said that he would sooner go back to his shop than agree to Sinn Féin's being in Government. What does the Committee that he chairs say now about the question of an Opposition?
“I do not think that one can divorce the Civic Forum from its parentage. Its parentage is the Belfast Agreement. I was simply gently reminding Mr Moutray that he has now moved to the point where he issues a paper which states in paragraph 3.20 that:
"The Assembly and Executive Review Committee has agreed that any consideration of the recognition of an Opposition in the Northern Ireland Assembly must recognise the consociational framework and the principles of inclusivity and power-sharing that underpin the workings of the Assembly and the Executive."
“What is that but speak for, "We must sustain the Belfast Agreement"? Any consideration of an Opposition must be in the context of underpinning the Belfast Agreement — that is what the paragraph says. That comes from the man who said that he would go back to his shop before he would agree to go into government with Sinn Féin.
“The truth is that what the Belfast Agreement has delivered us, in all seriousness, is a most dire blot on the democratic landscape where the people cannot change their Government, vote a party out of Government or have an Opposition. We have had enough uselessness waste and uselessness out of the Belfast Agreement without adding to that with the Civic Forum.”
