Allister chides UUP and scorns d'Hondt government
26 May 2006
Extract from a speech in Bangor by DUP MEP, Jim Allister, to North Down DUP Assosciation.
“Moving on from the stunning success of “Decent People Vote Ulster Unionist” the UUP has carved out its next election slogan: “Simply The Best”!
Decent people repudiate paramilitaries, but now the UUP clutch them to their bosom. Unionism, under the DUP, has been exerting maximum pressure on Sinn Fein/IRA to commit exclusively to politics by holding out on engagement till they demonstrably abandon all terror and criminality. But what does the UUP do? Not for the first time, they launch an initiative which helps let them off the hook. By inviting into their Assembly Party the apologist for an unreconstructed and still wholly armed and criminally active UVF, they gift Sinn Fein a vindicating excuse to do nothing.
Decent people are rightly disgusted. The UUP/PUP/UVF Alliance is abhorrent to law-abiding democrats, but is seen as a stroke of opportunistic genius by the pitiful leadership bunkered in Cunningham House. Expediency not principle is their determining factor.
Here, in North Down, let me challenge the liberal-touting UUP/Alliance MP, Sylvia Herman, to declare and act on her feelings about the subject. Or in her case will the expedience of silence win the day?
Let me turn to the subject of devolution.
Anyone who has witnessed the malevolent neglect and shameless politicking of Labour Direct Rule Ministers could not doubt but that devolution is a preferred form of government. But, as I’ve said before, it has to be an acceptable, democratic and durable form of devolution. That which hands over Ministries to associates and acolytes of criminal godfathers, to be run as fiefdoms with no accountability to the elected Assembly, is neither acceptable, democratic nor durable. Thus Belfast Agreement devolution has to be a failed thing of the past. Little wonder the hugely endorsed DUP 2005 Manifesto declares entry into executive government by Sinn Fein as being “out of the question”.
Let me also say that the absurdity of every Party being entitled, as of right, to seats in an Executive is also an unsustainable contrivance incapable of providing durable and democratic devolution. It is one thing to expect, even require, a cross-community administration - which should be formed on a voluntary basis on an agreed programme for government - it is quite something else to create in perpetuity a rigged system whereby even when a Party loses an election it still returns to government, as of right, with no meaningful opposition. Part of the democratic facility of an election is to enable the electorate to evict from government those whose stewardship has failed.
Under the anti-democratic Belfast Agreement the electorate is denied that right, for under d’Hondt all are guaranteed executive power. Such a travesty is unsustainable and in time destroys the democratic process. No where else in the world does such an absurd system exist. Yes, d’Hondt is used to elect parliamentarians, or to allocate committee places, but never anywhere, except Northern Ireland, to allocate ministerial offices. Why? Because it is a basic tenet of the democratic process that electorates are entitled to vote Parties out of office.”
