The following platform piece by TUV leader Jim Allister responding to recent comments by Peter Robinson appeared in today’s News Letter.
Since our inception TUV has constantly highlighted how unfit for purpose this Stormont is. Thus, it is welcome to have the man who for years has presided over these failing structures finally admit we are right. The real question going forward is whether his admission is mere rhetoric, or will the axe really be taken to the root of the problem, mandatory coalition. A commitment by the First Minister not to return to unfit structures would be a useful compulsion towards meaningful change.
Mandatory coalition – which gives every major party seats in government for ever, without ever having to be agreed on anything – is the core issue. As long as Northern Ireland is lumbered with this unworkable system with its inbuilt mutual vetoes, which Sinn Fein has used to block everything from welfare reform to the Ulster Aviation Society open day, nothing will change and we will lurch from one crisis to the next.
There is a reason why no other country in the Western world uses a system which denies people the right to vote a party out of government or even the right to have an opposition – it’s unworkable, as well as being undemocratic!
So it is critical that any negotiations with Her Majesty’s Government (and they must only be with HMG as we are talking about the internal affairs of Northern Ireland, which is no concern of Dublin) are about finding replacements for the present failed structures of government.
Root and branch reform of Stormont, not the policies to be pursued there, is the key priority.
However, it is clear from the comments of the Secretary of State on Tuesday evening that she sees the issues as welfare reform and the matters which were discussed during the Haass process (i.e. flags, parades and the past). We must not fall into the trap of majoring on talks about such policies, with amendment of the processes of government a mere addendum. No, correcting the processes of government to find a replacement for the failed structures of mandatory coalition and mutual vetoes, is the prerequisite. Policies and legislation on flags, parades and welfare reform are all the stuff of government, but, first, we must get the right structures in place. Then, those preparing to govern seek to agree their programme on such policy matters.
A short-term fix over welfare reform, without replacing the flawed structures, will only result in another logjam a little way down the track.
So what is the solution?
The proper route to shared government, with no party in Northern Ireland capable of forming a government on its own, is voluntary coalition. So, within the framework of devolution, how is good government attained? By the practice of normal politics and negotiation after every election. Those who can agree a platform and collectively command the requisite majority (which could even be a qualified majority so as to guarantee cross-community government) form the government; those who cannot, form the Opposition, challenging and affording voters an alternative at the next election.
Mandatory coalition has to go. The dysfunctional office of the joint First and deputy First Minister has to go. The institutionalising of sectarianism by compulsory community designation as either Unionist or Nationalist has to go.
What Northern Ireland needs is a genuine sharing of power by way of an agreement between parties BEFORE they go into government, not a carve up of government departments after an election between parties with no agreed plan for Northern Ireland. That’s what happens anywhere else in the democratic world.
If what is intended is a mere sticking plaster approach to patch up a fundamentally unreformed Stormont and a return to Haass style talks by the backdoor, then count TUV out. But, if the quest is to replace the failed mandatory coalition structures with workable and durable devolution, then TUV will not be found wanting.