NI 'cannot afford election delay'
Northern Ireland cannot afford a postponement of Assembly Elections next March, the leader of the Irish Republic’s Green Party Trevor Sargent insisted today.
As he launched a formal link-up between Green parties on both sides of the Irish border, the Dublin North TD insisted the Reverend Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams had to deliver power sharing together by next March at Stormont.
He also expressed alarm at suggestions that the St Andrews power sharing timetable could slip, with Assembly Elections postponed because of the Democratic Unionists and Sinn Féin’s stand-off over policing and justice.
“Not for one moment should there be any slippage in the timetable for devolution,” Mr Sargent said.
“March has been set as the date for an election. If that is postponed that would send out the signal that hope had been lost and create a feeling of despair.
“That would allow the extremists to come out of the woodwork and tell us that they told us so.”
He continued: “I think the time is up. The people of Northern Ireland need to be given the devolved administration which they voted for.
“We require Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams to take the steps together in a choreographed way.
“There is currently a political vacuum which is likely to be filled by disruption at best and violence at worst.
“If that happens, the responsibility will lie at the feet of Northern Ireland’s two largest parties.”
Under prime minister Tony Blair and Taoiseach Bertie Ahern’s power sharing plan, the Stormont Transitional Assembly will be dissolved on January 30 to allow elections to take place in March for a new Assembly.
With the DUP and Sinn Féin at loggerheads over policing, there are concerns about whether an Assembly Election can go ahead without any certainty that a power sharing government jointly headed by Ian Paisley and Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness will be formed following it.
The DUP wants Sinn Féin to publicly declare its support for the Police Service of Northern Ireland.
However, Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams has told the DUP and others he cannot call a special party conference to change its policing policy without a date for the transfer of policing and justice powers from Westminster to Stormont, agreement on the type of government department that will handle those issues and certainty that MI5 will have no role in civic policing.
During a debate in the Northern Ireland Assembly today, DUP peer Lord Morrow insisted his party would not give them a date for the devolution of policing and justice to trigger a move to endorse the police.
The Fermanagh and South Tyrone Assembly member asked: “Why do Sinn Féin not support the police today?
“Why did they not support them last week? Why are they not supporting them next week?
“I will tell you why. They have been promised more.
“Let the message go to the secretary of state (Peter Hain), the prime minister and anybody else listening that the more you concede to these people, the more resolute unionism will become because pushover unionism has gone. They are sitting quietly in a corner of this chamber today.”
