Allister replies to attack by Empey
02 March 2006
Following the attack by Cllr Empey on his QUB speech in which he denounced Belfast Agreement-style devolution, DUP MEP, Jim Allister has responded:-
“Clearly, Cllr Empey remains wedded to Belfast Agreement-style devolution, with all its fatal flaws and lamentable failures. Hence his response in jumping to its defence when I pointed out that it allowed Martin McGuinness and De Brun to run their departments like fiefdoms, with no accountability to the Assembly. So misty eyed is Cllr Empey about the “green, white and golden days” of uninhibited Sinn Fein rule that he falsely accuses the DUP of having sat in the Executive. No Reg, that was you, not once but three times with unreconstructed Sinn Fein/IRA. Remember now?
Cllr Empey and his Party really need to clear their thinking, because on the very day that Reg pines for those good old days of UUP/Sinn Fein government, his Assembly colleague, David McNarry declares: “we would be idiots to jump back into government with Sinn Fein when their credentials still fall short of reliable and worthy coparticipants.”. (News Letter 2/3/06).
So the UUP needs to come clean, does it want Belfast Agreement-style devolution restored, as it was, or does it agree with the DUP that there can be no going back to such failure?”
