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An alternative view of the last few weeks

07 May 2007

Platform piece by Jim Allister MEP:

Though in due course the shine will come off the new wonderland into which we have been so euphorically introduced, what a few weeks it has been! Unity in photography around the IRA’s Easter lily, handshakes to surpass all greetings, joint letters all round, grand words to go with grand gestures, priority invites to view the Stormont silverware, even for the travelling community, and an ill-concealed smugness from Sinn Fein, who can’t believe how easy it was.

The republican movement gets Martin McGuinness as co-equal in government with Ian Paisley, yet gets to keep its pernicious Army Council, never mind the luxury of cherry-picking which aspects of policing to support and individual members are still able to engage in criminality. Wow! Whatever happened to upfront and proven delivery, tested over a credible period? Whatever happened to the DUP?

The DUP once demanded a photograph of decommissioning. Sinn Fein said no, but we do get a photo with Easter lily-clad Gerry. What a triumph!

And, the best bit, unless you are one of those carping purists, is that it could go on and on! The prospect is marred only by the consternation – still reverberating round some upper echelons of the DUP – caused by Ian Paisley’s ill-judged boast of 4 more years, compounded by the slight that only he could do the job.
 
The travelling community invitation is significant for what it suggests to us as to how things now operate. For every unionist move there is an equal republican sop. That’s how joint government works. What will happen when Ian Paisley thinks its time to invite the disabled policemen or innocent victims to Stormont, who will Marty want to invite then to balance the ticket? You ain’t seen nothing yet!

But how did we get here? Certainly, arriving at 8th May without a jot of further delivery by IRA/Sinn Fein must be a shock to many on the DUP Executive who on 24th March voted on the promise that more delivery would occur. When I pointed out that the motion – which strangely we were not allowed to amend – bound the DUP into government in May provided only there was no backsliding from Sinn Fein, the meeting was robustly told by senior colleagues, this was not so and there would indeed be more delivery, and there had to be. Well, where is it?

Others, of course, didn’t even pretend an interest in more delivery and couldn’t wait to try out the trappings of office. Indeed, some have been swanking about in the ministerial limo even before they are formally appointed.

Where too is the effective default mechanism, promised by the DUP leadership in its province-wide consultation, to exclude Sinn Fein from government in the event of them reverting to form? Instead of delivering the promised legislative change, the DUP settled – Trimble-like - for a useless  unpublished “comfort letter” from Tony Blair! Remember the worth of his Coleraine graffiti.

Now, as we sceptics brace ourselves for the hype and hyperbole of Tuesday 8th May, many might rightly ask what was the last 40 years of opposition all about, if embracing IRA/Sinn Fein into the bosom of government was so easy and congenial. Why was it wrong for Terence O’Neill, Brian Faulkner, David Trimble to do what they did, but suddenly right for Ian Paisley to give us the terrible twin package of Martin McGuinness and Bomber Kelly as Ministers in the equal Office of First and Deputy First Minister?

Don’t ask me. I voted “NO”!

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NI politics