Opinion

Latest Stormont row is really all about votes

Storm clouds gather over Carson's statue at Parliment Buildings, Stormont. Picture Mal McCann.
Storm clouds gather over Carson's statue at Parliment Buildings, Stormont. Picture Mal McCann. Storm clouds gather over Carson's statue at Parliment Buildings, Stormont. Picture Mal McCann.

In the midst of the political and media blizzard generated about the non-existent IRA the one thing you can be absolutely certain about is that the unionist parties in the north and the Irish government parties and Fianna Fáil in the south are hell-bent on trying to limit the growth of Sinn Féin.

The current brouhaha is about the next elections north and south.

The future growth of Sinn Féin has instilled an irrational fear in the political elite that has dominated Irish politics, north and south since partition. In the north it is the unionist parties and in the south it is Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil.

That irrational fear has led to the current frenzy where unionists - lemming-like - are rushing towards the precipice where they have been many times before only to humiliate themselves and halt just before they plunge over into the political abyss.

The other absolute certainty in all of this is that none of those who are fixated about a non-existent IRA care one iota about the families and friends of Gerard Jock Davidson or Kevin McGuigan or the communities they come from.

Their deaths are being used by Sinn Féin’s political opponents in a desperate bid to prevent Martin McGuinness from becoming first minister in the north and Gerry Adams from becoming Taoiseach in the south.

The ground we are currently traversing has been traversed so many times before yet the electorate north and south have shown a remarkable ability to see through the hypocrisy and double-standards of Sinn Féin’s opponents. It is likely they will do so again.

And it is the electorate at the ballot box which has put Sinn Fein in the pivotal position it is in north and south and with good reason. And it is the electorate who are the final adjudicator on all matters including the current row about the non-existent IRA.

For the last two years Sinn Fein has set the agenda for the unionist parties in the executive and for the Irish government parties and Fianna Fáil.

Its opposition to austerity has embarrassingly curtailed the power of unionists who want the executive to implement Tory cuts and cannot get their own way and in the south it has led the opposition in Leinster House and supported the tens of thousands of people protesting against water charges and other austerity matters.

North and south it is using its formidable political influence to challenge the conservative status quo and offer a fair and equitable alternative.

And it is the notion of a fair and equitable alternative that is deeply worrying the Irish government whose policies ruined a buoyant economy and created a society where tens of thousands of people have been forced to emigrate, tens of thousands are unemployed, workers are taxed to the hilt and the rich and powerful remain so.

Although unionist political parties have made a significant contribution to changing politics on this island they do so very reluctantly and begrudgingly.

They deeply resent having to share power with Sinn Fein and the SDLP and inhabit a fantasy world wherein one day they will return to unionist majority rule.

It is this fantasy world which consumes them on occasions like now. They have no sense of how they are viewed by nationalists in particular.

Not so long ago Peter Robinson and Mike Nesbitt were comfortably in the company of representatives of the UVF and the UDA with a veiled threat summed up in the euphemism, ‘graduated response’.

The DUP and UUP sit on councils across the north with these representatives while loyalists kill Protestants and run extortion rackets and deal in drugs daily.

I have not once heard Robinson or Nesbitt ask about the existence of the UVF and UDA’s command structures. They do not ask for the expulsion of loyalist representatives from councils or threaten to withdraw from such councils.

Why not? The answer is simple – votes. They want loyalist votes so they pretend not to see and hear what the rest of us see and hear.

This week the row is about the non-existent IRA. Next week it will be something else about the IRA.

But it is really all about votes.