"Unionists will not be bounced"
25 September 2005
UNIONISTS WILL NOT BE BOUNCED - ALLISTER
In a statement indicative of a widespread unionist determination not to be bounced by any decommissioning, phoney or real, DUP MEP Jim Allister has warned that talk of early return to all inclusive government at Stormont is the stuff of pipedreams.
STATEMENT BY DUP MEP, JIM ALLISTER
"As and when confirmation of some further IRA decommissioning comes, it is clear it will lack the essential transparency necessary to deliver satisfaction that everything ever held by the Provos has been destroyed. Unsatisfactory as that in itself is, a key reality, from which Unionism must not shift, is that there can be no reward for giving up what should never have been held.
"The Government continues to corrupt the political process by trading concessions for guns, even before decommissioning, but hereafter, when the response lies in Unionism’s own hand, we must not repeat the folly of the past by embracing what will be spun as an opportunity for momentous political progress. In reality what will be asked of us to readmit Sinn Fein/IRA to government. I for one have no appetite for such and I discern no unionist community inclination in that direction.
"Rather, even with a form of advance on decommissioning, I believe mandatory coalition is not on the Unionist agenda and the prospect of Sinn Fein ever being thought fit for government is many years away. The need of the present is to move ahead with structures and parties which rewards the democratic willing, not those whom it will take years to prove have truly abandoned terror, criminality and duplicity.
"Why should the rest of us have to wait for this to happen? Thus, I believe, we now need a fresh focus not on how to get Sinn Fein into government, but on how to get government while they decontaminate."
