Opinion

Important to put Arlene’s decision not to stand into context

Sammy Wilson (May 17) argued that Sinn Féin will be nowhere near the Brexit negotiations or the discussions at Westminster either, but is he right to do so?

It’s important to observe that the DUP leader won’t be at those negotiations either as she isn’t standing for election to Westminster in her own constituency of Fermanagh and South Tyrone.

This is despite the DUP leader, who by her own admission is the leader of the lead unionist party which polled far higher than any other unionist party in recent elections, being arguably by far the stronger candidate for that constituency.

Instead she stood aside in Fermanagh and South Tyrone to give the UUP a clear run despite the DUP having a far greater mandate there.

It’s important to put the DUP leader’s decision into context.

Firstly, if the SDLP leader, Colum Eastwood, told the Sinn Féin leader in the north Michelle O’Neill to stand aside and give the smaller SDLP a free run in her constituency of Mid-Ulster, I think she would give him short shrift. Nor can I envisage Margaret Thatcher, Theresa May or Nicola Sturgeon being pushed aside by a junior party – can you?

Secondly, Stormont is effectively suspended and, thanks to the geniuses in the DUP who renegotiated the Belfast Agreement at St Andrews, its reinstatement is now entirely in the hands of Sinn Féin agreeing to nominate for deputy/first minister.

There is no incentive for Sinn Féin to do so because in the event of direct rule the British government will likely legislate for an Irish language act – if only because similar legislation is already in place for Welsh and Scottish Gaelic – without the need to make any concessions whatsoever in return and far more besides.


And without the assembly the DUP leader holds no office or status to speak of.

Lastly, Sammy is a tad myopic in his analysis. There is a better than 50 per cent chance that over the two-year course of Brexit negotiations the Sinn Féin president will be either taoiseach or tánaiste in the Dáil due to the perilous nature of the current Fine Gael government and so also a participant in the North-South and East-West strands of the Belfast Agreement.

Should Sinn Féin also get to select the Irish foreign minister then they would have a particularly strong hand.

And so with Stormont in abeyance, if Sammy’s DUP thought Brexit negotiations so important why didn’t their leader stand for election to Westminster to lead their negotiations? 

BERNARD J MULHOLLAND


Belfast BT9

Anti-social crisis didn’t arise today or yesterday

I’m sure we can all appreciate the misery of neighbourhoods in the grip of anti-social behaviour. There is much that the police can do to deal with the problem, particularly if they are given wholehearted support by the wider community.

The demonstration of community concern in the Lower Falls (May 19) is a progressive step. But some of the speeches, as reported, seem selective in the extreme. ‘People here have suffered for years – the legacy of the Troubles, from the RUC and loyalist paramilitaries…’. No mention here of the trauma experienced by hundreds of people, many of them children, in west Belfast who were battered and mutilated by republican paramilitaries.

That system of brutalisation, the so-called paramilitary ‘policing’, has produced generations of dysfunctional families and disaffected and violent youngsters. The republican and loyalist movements have a special responsibility to repair the damage they inflicted on families and neighbourhoods over the last four decades. Even a belated acknowledgement of this responsibility and the counter-productive nature of ‘informal justice’ would be helpful.

As we know, there has been a surge in republican paramilitary shootings of young nationalists in the last year or so.


Belfast must be the only city in the western world where children can be subjected to shootings by clowns in masks fantasising about being soldiers of an imagined republic.


We might expect ‘community leaders’, when speaking at public meetings on anti-social behaviour to criticise such thuggish attitudes to law and order and to drive home a clear message of the unacceptability of vigilantes on our streets and alleyways. The present crisis did not arise today or yesterday.

LIAM KENNEDY


Belfast BT7

Present scripted by the past

The posters are up, the leaflets dropped, the doorsteps canvassed, the heart warming promises made and the eye-catching slogans thought out and we are in the midst of another election like no other. The clarion call for a time for change, a chance to put you first, restore dignity and honesty and put integrity at the heart of government is made across the constituencies. The opportunities are within your grasp.

Having had the opportunity to speak with one such hopeful candidate as he canvassed with the enthusiasm and hope that the young and naïve are possessed of; to be met at the doorstep with a tempered and measured view of our political landscape and the realities of pacts, protectionism and patronage built upon ancient fears and suspicions that will lead inevitably to what is colloquially termed the sectarian head count. An ugly and inadequate description that is the raison d’être that drives the electorate faced with the realities of a blunt choice between a lesser of two evils.

And as the cable ties are all that is left of the colourful posters, leaflets binned and slogans forgotten we see a return to the carnage of rancour and recrimination that passes for government played out before the many who had negotiated a single path around a rock and a hard place to find themselves back to a present scripted by the past.

LAURENCE TODD


Belfast BT15

Abortion bandwagon

The British Labour Party is the latest collective of abortionistas jumping and screaming onto the bandwagon to bring abortion to Northern Ireland. Their manifesto for the General Election states (page 109) “we will work with the assembly to extend that right to choose a safe and legal abortion to women in Northern Ireland”.

Safe for whom? The baby that is in its mother’s womb, the safest place for each and every one of us?


This is worrying enough but made even more so by Labour’s continual refusal to stand here for election, in what is supposed to be an equal part of the UK, where we are said to be valued as much as the good people of Yorkshire and Cornwall.

I urge all pro-lifers to contact the Labour party and tell Mr Corbyn that his interference in Northern Ireland is neither welcome nor necessary.

JOHN AUSTIN


Limavady, Co Derry

Election of  taoiseach undemocratic

Soon a new taoiseach will be nominated by a Dáil which has had no mandate from the people who are meant to be sovereign. The upcoming election of a new Fine Gael party leader is undemocratic as the election is skewed in favour of the parliamentary party which has a weighted majority. Whatever happened to one member one vote?

After the new leader of Fine Gael is elected they will present themselves to the Dáil for nomination. May I ask in what way are we the voter involved is this and shouldn’t we be?

PAUL DORAN


Clondalkin, Dublin 22

Absence of contribution

Many words and pages given to Enda Kenny in media on his resignation though nothing on his contribution to the north. And that’s because simply there were was none from this Irish taoiseach. 

MARTIN KEENAN


Belfast BT11