Provo Ministers for life, not just for Christmas!
02 October 2006
Extract from a speech by Jim Allister MEP to Ballynahinch DUP on Saturday 30th September
“Under Belfast Agreement devolution a Provo Minister is not just for Christmas, it would be for life! Why? Because, thanks to the absurd D’Hondt system every Party in a mandatory coalition is guaranteed, as of right, to a perpetual place in government, irrespective of election results, so long as they attain the easy target of 7 Assembly seats.
This is the inherent iniquity and anti-democratic imperative of D’Hondt. In any election, worth having, the electorate is able to vote a Party out of office. But under D’Hondt, no matter how lamentably a Party – whatever its hue – has performed in Government, you could never get rid of them, provided they pass the tiny threshold of 7 MLAs.
Little wonder d’Hondt is not used anywhere else in the world as a means of selecting a government. Also, little wonder, the Northern Ireland electorate so strongly endorsed the 2005 DUP Manifesto which declared inclusive mandatory coalition government under d’Hondt as “out of the question”. And, so it should remain.
Speaking of Christmas, it is obvious that Sinn Fein, aided by the schoolyard bully, Hain, has been hoping for an early Christmas this year on 24th November.
What a dream Christmas it would be for them! A Party which rejects Northern Ireland – indeed cannot even bring itself to use its constitutional name – and which still justifies decades of violence and murder to subvert the settled will of its people, thinks, nay demands, nonetheless, that it must be in the government of the State it is pledged to destroy, so, no doubt, that it can forward that process. And all this, while inextricably linked to an illegal "Army", still with its command structures in place, and still benefiting from its investment in the Northern Bank heist and its wider portfolio of crime , still with senior republicans involved in criminality, and while still vilifying and opposing the police.
Hitherto some Unionist turkeys may have voted for Christmas, but not this time!”
