DUP: King-makers in North Down

Following months of speculation surrounding her future, the current MP for North Down Lady Silvia Hermon (above) has finally resigned as a member of Ulster Unionist Party (UUP). It was widely known that Lady Hermon had been deeply unhappy with her party’s official electoral alliance with the UK Conservative Party. The UUP and tories electorally aligned last year under the Ulster Conservatives and Unionist New Force (UCUNF) banner. Immediately after confirmation of her resignation Lady Hermon announced that she will now contest the North Down constituency as an independent unionist candidate in the forthcoming UK Parliamentary election.

Traditionally a unionist seat, North Down now finds itself an interesting political battleground between the internal fractures within Unionism - with media focus now on whether Lady Hermon can beat her old party and win the seat as an independent. I personally admire her ideological stand in opposing the UUP-Conservative alliance - but I do not fancy her chances.

But ultimately the interesting point in all this is that the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) has yet to nominate a candidate or confirm their intention to contest the North Down constituency in the forthcoming election. Although the DUP having not declared a candidate for the seat as of yet, I believe this to be a tactical ploy. You can bet that the DUP have been watching every development in North Down very closely as the Lady Hermon debacle has unravelled over the last number of months.

If the DUP decide to put forward a candidate the split in the previous UUP vote, between Lady Hermon supporters and the UUP party loyalists, will be enough to allow the DUP victory. If the DUP do not contest the election I suspect that the UUP will win comfortably. The UUP know this and so do the DUP. Media sources are claiming that the DUP have not put forward a candidate in order to allow Lady Hermon a free-run at the UUP, but I do not see that as the case.

I believe the issue of whether the DUP will contest the North Down seat is now a negotiation tool in the ongoing DUP and UUP narrative over “Unionist Unity”. Will the DUP trade a DUP no-show in North Down for a UUP no-show in Fermanagh South Tyrone? And vice-versa? There is much at stake in North Down for the UUP, including the future of UCUNF and even the future of the UUP itself. North Down, the only seat that they held in the current parliament, could be the UUP's Alamo and therefore they will be prepared to use any means necessary to retain it. At all costs. So it is very possible that they will be prepared to explore such "diplomatic" avenues.

I suspect some high-politics will be at play now over the next week or two between the UUP and DUP. If the UUP lose the North Down seat and do not gain another then their alliance with the Conservatives will be virtually in tatters and defunct and they will be left with no MP. It will be a devastating blow to the party. The major question is how far are the UUP are willing to go in order to prevent this from happening?

No Justice Found In This Unholy Alliance

So the NI Assembly has voted and finally agreed to the devolution of Policing and Justice powers from Westminster. This follows protracted negotiations and recent talks between all the major parties and the British and Irish Prime Ministers.

The SDLP had been the only party to make a nomination for the role of Justice Minister until the Alliance Party finally confirmed, what many commentators had expected, and signalled their intention to nominate also.

The major area of interest though throughout this saga has been the issue surrounding the allocation of the position or what party should be the recipient of the new Justice Ministry. If the Ministry was allocated by the d’Hondt procedure, the normal procedure for allocating Ministries in this power-sharing system, then it would be the SDLP that would be entitled to take the position.

However the UK Northern Ireland Act (2009) stipulated that if devolution of powers would occur, during the lifetime of this assembly, a future Justice Ministry would be allocated by a cross-community vote in the Assembly. The Alliance nomination, coupled with this departure from the d’Hondt mechanism, has caused consternation and concern in some quarters and quite rightfully for number of reasons.

Under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement the allocation of positions on the Northern Ireland Executive is performed under d’Hondt. Now it seems that this procedure enshrined in the Good Friday Agreement is all of a sudden politically expendable and conveniently ignored at the behest of the British Government.

The Alliance Party previously stated that they do not wish to be part of the Executive. Now we see a complete policy somersault by Alliance simply because their political principles can be bought. This volte-face came about after the DUP and Sinn Fein agreed to a much awaited, but cobbled-together, community relations strategy for NI. It has taken 12 years since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement for a community relations strategy to be agreed and so the timing of this is obviously questionable with the strategy seen by many as condition for Alliance support.

If the Alliance Party nomination is passed by the Assembly it will mean that out of 108 Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs) 104 members belong to parties which form the Government. That would not be democracy. It would be a form of tyranny and an affront democracy. How can the NI Executive be held to account by a body that is overwhelming dominated by parties of the Executive? It frankly can not be. It would be a wholly undemocratic arrangement, with dire consequences for the quality of legislation and the political health of the Assembly.

The UK Northern Ireland Act (2009) highlights that the British Government has been completely complicit in a process of political manipulation that has involved slowly stripping away the terms of the Good Friday Agreement in order to prop-up the DUP and Sinn Fein leadership. You can't just change the rules half way through the game in order to engineer a particular outcome- that is gerrymandering. Just when we thought that the malign influences of the past were dead and buried it seems that gerrymandering is still alive and well in 21st century Northern Ireland.

Frankly the Northern Ireland Act 2009 was an affront to democracy. Not only did the Government put the legislation through accelerated passage to prevent proper scrutiny of the bill but they also enforced limited debate and opportunity for amendments. There are many issues of concern around this legislation, such as the issues surrounding the 2012 sunset clause, the role of the PPS, M15 and intelligence gathering, etc. While these issues remain important, they do not distract from what is the major issue in my eyes- the change from the normal procedure for appointing ministers.

There has been no credible justification or rationale for this departure from normal procedure. The Ministry should be treated equally along with all the other Ministries, allocated by the same procedure, and should not be made into a special case. The rationale that the Justice position requires specific “cross-community” support implies that all Ministers in the Executive currently do not command cross-party support across the Assembly. While that is probably true, it is the reality of power-sharing within a divided society and within the terms of a mandatory coalition.

Why is there such a preoccupation with the precondition of having a “cross-community” vote for the Justice post? Other Ministers do not require this prerequisite – they are elected by their constituents to the Assembly and nominated by their respective party directly to the Executive. That is representative democracy. What is needed is not special arrangements for the allocation of contentious Executive positions – but a much more accountable political dispensation around Executive table decision-making to ensure that Ministers are held properly to account and can not create the type of crisis such as that already created in our Education system.

The argument made by advocates for this change in procedure, that the departure from d’Hondt is necessary to protect Policing and Justice issues from divisive political interventions in line with the political policing of the past, is misled. We already have the Policing Board, local District Policing Partnerships and sufficient accountability mechanisms within the Executive to ensure sufficient accountability. Furthermore, the future Justice Minister will only have nominal powers and major operational issues remain the responsibility of the Police Chief Constable - so there is very little wriggle-room for a Justice Minister to create controversy.

The change in allocation procedure has been a calculated move by the British Government in order to secure the support of the DUP for the devolution of Policing powers, by denying the position to the nationalist SDLP. This would be directly prior to a pivotal General Election for the DUP - faced with the threat from the dissident unionists within the TUV. The DUP would not want a nationalist being appointed Justice Minister full stop - never mind right before a pivotal General Election. It is also an attempt to hijack the idea of "cross-community" for political ends by dressing up what is political expediency as the common good. Equally it has been a sop to Sinn Fein, who for obvious propaganda purposes wish to see themselves as the first ever Nationalist Justice Minister, not the SDLP.

This departure from the normal process of d’Hondt has ignored the democratic mandate of the SDLP and denied their supporters their full political rights- simply in order to appease the major parties. It is inherently undemocratic, an act of discrimination. It is quite clear that the setting down of preconditions for the allocation of the Justice post is a blatant guise for gerrymandering.

The need for increased cross-community consensus in all realms of political life here is clearly evident but I am not naïve enough to believe that the reason behind this move to change the appointment procedure for a Justice Minister has anything to do with "cross-community" consensus. Nor am I naive enough to believe that such a vote in the Assembly will automatically create "cross-community" consensus around Policing and Justice issues, that is a process that will take time.

Allocating Ministers on the basis of a “cross-community” vote in the Assembly undermines power-sharing by ignoring the d’Hondt procedure and the differing mandates giving to the various political parties by the electorate. It is the vote of the people that should determine the make up of the Government – not an internal vote taken by political parties within the legislature. If the Alliance Party had any respect for democracy then they would not participate in such a fait d’accompli. Alliance should recognise the mandate of the SDLP and support the SDLP candidate for Justice Minister.

SAMMY GOES WHAAMMY!

At the beginning of the week Environment Minister Sammy Wilson put his foot in it again by censoring a planned UK Government advertisement campaign aimed at educating people about the impacts on climate change. The Minister, whose sceptical views on the impact of humans on climate change are well known, claimed the planned TV campaign was ‘insidious propaganda’.

Never one to shy away from saying what he thinks, the Environment Minister refused back down on his decision and subsequently during the course of the week drew further criticism by weakly attempting to justify his decision.

If the public uproar over this debacle wasn't bad enough for Wilson - it seems he might now be in a considerable spot of bother with the NI Assembly - after the Environment Committee passed a 6-4 vote of ‘No Confidence’ in the Minister earlier today.

Environment Committee member and SDLP Environment Spokesperson Tommy Gallagher MLA proposed the motion of 'No Confidence' in the Minister. The SDLP’s Gallagher said ‘we need to be taking environmental issues much more seriously than the Minister appears to be taking them’.

However fellow Environment Committee member, the DUP’s Peter Weir, criticised the motion and labelled it nothing more than ‘a point scoring exercise’. With considerable pressure on the Minister will Big Sammy live to fight another day?

Wilson it must be said is not normally one to back down and it is extremely doubtful that he will pay much attention to the Committee’s ruling. But with mounting public and political pressure against a Minister that simply won't back down, or doesn't know when to shut up, the DUP may be forced to act.

Interestingly these recent comments from Wilson further add to a general theme of controversy that seems to follow the Minister wherever he goes these days. One could be forgiven for getting the impression that Wilson seems to enjoy being the centre attention and revels in his own sensationalism. Seems like nothing more than a trumped-up ego trip to me.

Last week we had Sammy lambasting local schools for closures, due to the recent snowfall, with Wilson claiming the decision was in appeasement of ‘health and safety nuts’.

The week before that Sammy sparked a backlash - after providing yet another useful insight into the DUP’s rascist mindset - when he suggested that during the economic crisis it should be a case of ‘local jobs for local people’. Although Big Sammy may not live in Royston Vasey, or shop at a ‘local shop for local people’, he certainly is in a League of His Own.

So that makes it an already extremely eventful year for the Environment Minister and it is only February! I wonder who or what will be the next target for Big Sammy...

Environment Minister Censors Climate Change Awareness Campaign

Once again poor old Northern Ireland is the laughing stock of the rest of the UK and Ireland....

The Environment Minister Sammy Wilson has again put his head above the parapet by withdrawing a planned UK Government advertisement campaign aimed at educating people about their individual impacts on climate change and providing information on how to reduce their carbon footprint.

The Environment Minister is again under mounting pressure for his outspoken views that humans do not contribute to climate change.

This subsequent political pressure was to be expected and is completely justified.

His controversial decision is based on his belief that climate change is not a man made problem. This is the same belief system held by (thankfully) former US President George Bush and flies in the face of a growing body of scientific evidence that frimly stipulates that climate change is a man made problem.

Leading climate scientists are in consensus that there is a considerable human impact on climate change.

The International Panel on Climate Change, set up by the United Nations, is made up of climate experts from all over the planet and after the last round of UN climate talks they again reiterated the devastating impact that man is having on the planet.

Unfortunately there are many climate change sceptics and eco-deniers out there in the north and this move will resonate well with them. On the contrary to Sammy's beliefs - that 'eco-fundamentalists' are not informed- it is these people who have not read up on the issue.

Wilson is playing a dangerous game by going down this road against scientific consensus and against UK Government policy (plus EU) on this issue.

I think (hope) that sometimes deep down Sammy doesn't even believe some of the stuff he spouts and only says it to portray himself as anti-political correctness and straight talking. If this is the case then he is not the type of person who should be in an important role such as Environment Minister.

If he is actually using the climate change issue as some platform to seem radical and against fashionable thought then he is acting grossly irresponsibly.

Climate change affects us all- it is a global challenge. But it affects the global population in very varied ways and intensities. If you adhere to the 'three worlds' theory (that suggests that we need 3 planet earths to sustain our current rate of consumption) then you will be aware that climate change and environmental degradation will certainly impact negatively on the quality of lives of our children.

A wetter global climate climate has already devasted wheat crops across the world leading to global rises in the price of bread. This has lead to starvation for many thousands of people living in non-OECD countries and put many pressures on the lives of those living in poverty. This is just one impact of climate change.

It is ok for Sammy Wilson to sit in his ivory tower up at DUP HQ and talk this type of nonsense when he is ignorant to the fact that people in Africa have to live with Environmental Rascism on a daily basis. These people are the ones bearing the true brunt of climate change- with desertification and drought an all too sombre reality.

The Environment Minister may not believe in the human impact on climate change but there are many people with knowledge and experience on the issue who would beg to differ.