Voting formula 'damages devolution hopes'
Northern Secretary Paul Murphy was warned today that restoring the North’s Assembly voting system next month could seriously damage plans to bring back devolution.
As Northern Ireland’s parties began to play down expectations of a breakthrough next week in the peace process, cross-community Alliance Party leader David Ford said the British and Irish governments needed to wake up to the dangers posed by the Assembly’s system for electing Stormont First Deputy Ministers.
The South Antrim MLA said ahead of the meeting today with Mr Murphy: “We are expecting to hear the proposal currently on the negotiating table.
“However we will also be putting to the Secretary of State that, unless the voting designations in the Assembly are dealt with, there can be no firm lasting settlement which will emerge next week.”
Under current Assembly rules, Northern Ireland’s First Deputy Ministers have to be elected with a majority of unionist votes at Stormont and a majority of nationalist votes.
The votes of cross-community parties like Alliance and the Women’s Coalition do not count.
In November 2001 Ulster unionist leader David Trimble and nationalist SDLP leader Mark Durkan failed in their first bid to be elected as the joint heads of the Stormont power sharing executive when members of the UUP sided with anti-Good Friday Agreement unionists against them.
Mr Durkan and Mr Trimble were elected days later at the second attempt when three members of the Alliance Assembly Group agreed to temporarily redesignate as unionists. Women’s Coalition MLA Jane Morrice also changed her designation from “other” to “unionist”.
However last year Mr Ford warned the Government that unless they made cross-community parties votes count, Alliance would never again change its designation in the Assembly to bail the political process out.
“The governments could very easily find after the next Assembly election that unionists will not support a Sinn Fein Deputy First Minister should that party emerge as the largest voice on the nationalist benches,” he warned today.
“Therefore the British and Irish governments need to be looking at the voting system now instead of supporting a mechanism which merely reinforces sectarian divisions by making people declare themselves as unionist or nationalist.”
As British and Irish government officials continued to concoct a formula which would persuade the IRA and loyalist paramilitaries to end all activity and which would also implement outstanding aspects of the Good Friday Agreement, another round of intense discussions was taking place between the parties and both governments.
Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams and the party’s chief negotiator Martin McGuinness were due in Dublin for talks with Taoiseach Bertie Ahern.
The British Prime Minister’s most senior aide, Jonathan Powell, was also expected to fly into Northern Ireland later this week for more discussions with parties.
However the belief of many of the talks participants last night was that Prime Minister Tony Blair and Taoiseach Bertie Ahern’s March 3 visit to Hillsborough Castle would fail to produce a magic formula which would command support in both nationalism and unionism.
“With no real sense of what republicans are prepared to do and how unionists may react, people are using faith,” one source admitted.
“At this point it is looking a lot less like a deal next week and more like a stocktaking exercise.”
If a deal commanding the support of all sides is not reached in March, parties will be anxious to hear from the government about whether the Assembly elections scheduled for May 1 will go ahead or be postponed to allow efforts to stabilise the Good Friday Agreement to continue.
