Blair and Ahern Set Stormont Deadline

The British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Irish counterpart Taoseich Bernie Ahern met in Armagh yesterday to set a deadline for the squabbling political parties in Ulster to come to power-sharing agreement. The two men said that if the whole thing isn’t sorted our by November 24, devolution there is dead. Unionist leader The Reverend Ian Paisley, who was celebrating his 80th birthday, couldn’t have asked for a better present.

The Reverend had been consigned to the dustbin of history when the Good Friday Accord, which he and his Democratic Unionist Party opposed, was approved. The Ulster Unionists of David Trimble held enough seats to work with the nationalists and make the DUP’s resistance irrelevant. Then came the general election last year, and the voters threw Mr. Trimble out on his Nobel-laureate backside. The DUP had nine of Ulster’s 19 Westminster seats and the UUP just one. For the first time ever, Mr. Paisley’s noise was matched by his actual, electoral strength.

The Stormont Assembly, by which the Ulster legislature is known, came to a grinding halt in October 2002 after allegations surfaced over an IRA spy ring. Efforts to get it going again are failing because the Reverend Paisley won’t speak to Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams. For an American audience, it’s rather like trying to get segregationist Governor George Wallace to talk to Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver. Even if they were to talk, it is hard to imagine what they would have to say to one another.

The Reverend Paisley’s position is simple; the IRA must disband, cease to function, become part of the past, and nothing anyone does or says will ever convince him that it has done so. In July 2005 when the IRA “decommissioned” its weapons witnessed by Canadian General John de Chastelain and two clergymen (one Roman Catholic and the other Protestant), the DUP leader said, “We've heard it all before.”

The execution earlier this week of Denis Donaldson, a former Sinn Fein official and British spy, gives the DUP grounds for saying “No” to everything. The IRA has denied any involvement, but that’s where the fingers are currently pointing. Now, the clock is ticking against Stormont, and the DUP, like a basketball team up by 10 with a minute to go, just needs to run out the clock. Mr. Blair could be out of office before Ian Paisley’s grandchildren wish him a Happy 81st birthday, and Mr. Ahern may face Ireland’s voters in a year or so. The leaders of the UK and Eire come and go, but Mr. Paisley seems to go on forever.

© Copyright 2006 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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