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Election sets back N. Ireland accord
Hard-liners’ gains imperil power-sharing agreement
By Glenn Frankel
THE WASHINGTON POST
LONDON, Nov. 28 — Hard-line political parties on both sides of Northern Ireland’s Protestant-Catholic divide triumphed Friday in elections for the local legislature, putting in doubt the future of the power-sharing agreement that lies at the heart of the peace process in the British province.
AMONG PROTESTANT VOTERS, the Democratic Unionist Party, led by Rev. Ian Paisley, 77, defeated the more moderate Ulster Unionists under David Trimble, one of the prime movers in the peace process and lead minister in the now-dismantled local government. Even in Trimble’s party, several opponents of the agreement won election, giving Protestants who reject the power-sharing deal a solid majority.
On the Catholic side, Sinn Fein, the political affiliate of the paramilitary Irish Republican Army, vaulted over the Social Democratic and Labor Party, which until Friday had been the largest Catholic-oriented party. Both parties support the 1998 accord, known as the Good Friday agreement, which for the first time in the province’s troubled history guaranteed the Catholic minority a share of decision-making in local affairs.
Paisley and his party are committed to scrapping the agreement, which they contend has given too much power to Sinn Fein and the IRA. While Democratic Unionists served as cabinet ministers in the last local government, they insist they will not do so again until the IRA has disarmed and been disbanded.
• Special report: Disarming Northern Ireland
Neither side predicted a return to the sectarian violence that claimed the lives of more than 3,500 Catholics, Protestants and British soldiers over nearly three decades before the enactment of the power-sharing accord. But many analysts expect a long period of stalemate and political wrangling before the local assembly is reconvened.
GOOD FRIDAY ACCORD IN DANGER
Sinn Fein’s leader, Gerry Adams, appealed to Paisley, who is a Presbyterian minister, for talks on reconciliation. “I don’t know of anything within the Christian philosophy which is not about dialogue, conversation and dealing with sinners,” Adams said.
“And as a sinner I offer myself up, and on behalf of those who I represent, to be converted by Dr. Paisley to his vision of the future,” he said.
Sinn Fein wants Northern Ireland to merge with the Republic of Ireland to the south. The Protestant parties want it to remain part of Britain.
‘I’m not talking to Sinn Fein and my party’s not talking to Sinn Fein, and anybody that talks to Sinn Fein will be out of my party?’
— REV. IAN PAISLEY
Democratic Unionist Party Paisley’s supporters said they would stick to his party’s line of no talks with Sinn Fein, whose leaders they accuse of complicity in thousands of deaths. Paisley made that position dramatically clear Thursday. When a journalist for Ulster Television asked if he would speak to Sinn Fein after the election, Paisley grabbed the reporter by the collar with both hands and bellowed: “Do I need to repeat it? Do I need to take you by the neck and say no, I’m not, I’m not talking to Sinn Fein and my party’s not talking to Sinn Fein, and anybody that talks to Sinn Fein will be out of my party?”
British and Irish officials, overseers of the power-sharing pact, said they would meet with the major parties over the next few days. In a joint statement they declared they would “seek a political way forward and to secure a basis on which the assembly can be restored and a functioning executive quickly established.” But the two governments insisted that the Good Friday agreement was “the only viable political framework” for Northern Ireland and that its fundamental principles were “not open to renegotiation.”
The U.S. government has also been active in achieving and maintaining the accord, and the White House national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said she hoped progress would continue. “I do believe that, having tasted peace, the people of Northern Ireland desperately want peace,” she said.
‘A TRAIN WRECK’
‘This is a train wreck, as far as the agreement is concerned.’
— ADRIAN GUELKE
ueen's University in Belfast The victory marks a comeback for Paisley, a veteran political warrior who for decades has declared that there can be no deal with the IRA.
His party ran a deft campaign, analysts said, with the leader preaching no compromise while some of his younger lieutenants promised to be pragmatic if the party won power. But given Paisley’s personal stand, analysts predicted progress would be slow.
“This is a train wreck, as far as the agreement is concerned,” said Adrian Guelke, a professor of politics at Queen’s University in Belfast, the Northern Ireland capital. “We’re in for a very rough ride of stalemate and deadlock for the foreseeable future ... I don’t think this is a party about to change its spots so completely that things will come round.”
In the final tally of the vote, which took place Wednesday but required two days to tabulate, Paisley’s Democratic Unionists won 30 of the assembly’s 108 seats, a gain of 10, to become the province’s largest party, while Trimble’s Unionists won 27, a drop of one. Most of the Democratic Unionists’ gains came at the expense of smaller parties that had supported the accord, and analysts said the results reflected general disaffection with the agreement in the Protestant community.
Sinn Fein won 24 seats, an increase of six, while its more moderate Catholic counterpart, the Social Democratic and Labor Party, fell from 24 to 18. Analysts attributed much of these gains to Sinn Fein’s evolution into a modern, less militant but efficient vote-getting machine that reflects the aspirations of blue-collar Catholics. The non-sectarian Alliance Party held onto its six seats, and the remaining three went to independents.
The results were an especially bitter blow for Trimble, one of the architects of the 1998 Good Friday agreement. Although Trimble shared a Nobel Peace Prize for his role in reaching the accord, his credibility and political standing have eroded in recent years because of disputes with Sinn Fein. On Friday evening, he faced new calls for his resignation from dissidents in his party. His most prominent opponent, Jeffrey Donaldson, called the election ” a disastrous result for our party” and demanded that Trimble resign.
IRA BLAMED FOR SNAGS
But Trimble remained defiant. “I have every intention of continuing as leader,” he said. “I know there’s an important job to be done, and I have demonstrated over the last eight years there’s more than a little stickability here.”
The assembly has been out of business since October 2002, when British Prime Minister Tony Blair dissolved it and put Northern Ireland back under direct British rule following the disclosure of an alleged IRA spy ring at Stormont, site of the assembly. Unionists said the allegation showed that Sinn Fein and the IRA were not committed to the peace process.
Adams and Trimble had been meeting secretly for months, seeking a deal that would have allowed the assembly to reopen and restored some of Trimble’s standing among Protestants. They came close to agreement in October — Blair and Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern flew to the Northern Ireland capital, Belfast, to make the announcement — but Trimble backed out at the last minute.
The IRA failed to deliver a convincing statement permanently renouncing armed struggle along with a visible decommissioning of its weapons, he said. The IRA has disposed of weapons three times since 1998, but never in public and without disclosing quantities.
Blair’s office effectively blamed the IRA for the snag, saying the organization had failed to clarify its commitment to peace. Analysts said Trimble lost more credibility in the Protestant community because of the failure.
Blair has his own political deadline, hoping to draw down the number of British troops in the province from 12,000 to fewer than 5,000 before the next British election, which he is widely expected to call in 2005. At the height of the violence in 1972, Britain had more than 25,000 soldiers in Northern Ireland.
“It is more than a little frustrating,” Blair said last month, when the latest peace effort collapsed. “As always with Northern Ireland, we will just have to try, try and try again.”
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