Allister slams Robinson's "audacious and deceptive" claim
13 April 2008
EXTRACT FROM A SPEECH BY TRADITIONAL UNIONIST MEP JIM ALLISTER AT A TUV MEETING IN LIMAVADY ON FRIDAY 12 APRIL 2008
“It used to be that the Ulster Unionist Party had cornered the market within Unionism for spin and deception. However, just as they’ve been dethroned in the electoral stakes, so too they’ve been outclassed in the spin department by the DUP. Seldom can there have been a more audacious and deceptive claim than the assertion this week by Peter Robinson that the Belfast Agreement is gone and is buried. If it were, then its statutory incarnation, the Northern Ireland Act 1998, would have been repealed. Instead it continues to decree how we are governed.
I wish Peter Robinson’s claim was true, but sadly the fundamentals of the Belfast Agreement live on and continue to give us, as originally intended, unrepentant terrorists at the heart of our government. . St Andrews did not alter its basic architecture. The essential structures of the Belfast Agreement were, and are, these:-
• government by mandatory coalition, so that a party can never be voted out of office and Opposition is denied. The purpose, of course, is to guarantee IRA/Sinn Fein a permanent place in the government of the state they are dedicated to destroy.
• the dysfunctional office of Joint First Ministers, OFMDFM, whereby equality is guaranteed for republicanism and the right of veto is enshrined by reason of the First Minister being unable to do anything - even sign a letter - without Sinn Fein's agreement.
• entrenched north/south executive bodies to advance harmonisation on an all-Ireland basis.
Nor has the intended trajectory of the Belfast Agreement been altered. It was, and is, eventual Irish unification. Hence the continuing pledge of the British Government to legislate for Irish unity, as and when the people agree - with the only proposal on the constitution which can ever be put in referendum being one for unification. The essence of the referendum provision is to permit the people to be asked, after sufficient all-island harmonisation, "Are you yet ready to join the Republic of Ireland?" This is the indisputable scheme and objective of the Belfast Agreement.
So despite all the red-faced re-branding and repackaging, the iniquitous Belfast Agreement is still with us. It was all but gone, but tragically those who were instrumental in seeing it almost done to death have themselves breathed new life into it. Make no mistake, without the DUP volte face the Belfast Agreement was dead, but thanks to the resuscitation skills of Peter Robinson its very much back in all its ill-glory.”
