IT was a dull election with a result which most of us expected. About the same number of people voted as voted at the last Assembly election in 2011 and voted pretty much the same way.
102 of the 108 MLAs are from the big five parties; the other six made up of two Greens, two People Before Profit (the only new party in the Assembly), one TUV and the Independent, Claire Sugden.
The DUP and Sinn Féin - with 66 between them - have a clear mandate to continue working together at the heart of the Executive.
The very best thing that could happen now would be for the other parties to leave them to get on with delivering both the Fresh Start and their own Programme for Government.
The UUP and SDLP focused much of their campaigns on the `dysfunctional relationship' and `non delivery' of the DUP/SF axis.
They argued that they would do a better job if voters gave them the mandate and opportunity.
It may have been the UUP's line, but the `Make It Work' line was what both Nesbitt and Eastwood were offering. Alliance's `Move Forward, Faster' amounted to much the same thing as the other two.
But the electorate rejected their offer. The UUP did worse than they did in 2011 - which had been their worst ever result until that point - dropping votes and failing to add a single seat.
Having had five MLAs across Belfast in 1998, they are now down to one, in East Belfast. Meanwhile, the SDLP lost two seats and about 11,000 votes.
Alliance also lost votes and failed to make the gains they had been talking up during the campaign.
These three parties do not have a mandate to enter the Executive. They weren't given a mandate to enter the Executive.
Alliance doesn' have the numbers; the SDLP has the numbers, just; and the UUP is exactly where it was five years ago.
So, instead of entering the Programme for Government talks later this week, they should enter their own talks about forming the opposition. And Alliance should make it clear that they will not be offering a candidate for the Justice department.
Up until a few weeks ago the smaller parties had an `excuse' for going into the Executive, namely that there weren't `official' structures of opposition.
Those structures now exist and the excuse has gone. If these parties still have their concerns about the DUP/SF relationship then they now have a way of monitoring and challenging that relationship; and they also have the opportunity to provide an alternative to the Executive's Programme for Government with one of their own.
Nine years of being in the Executive hasn't delivered extra votes and seats for these three parties. They remain small and generally insignificant because they have allowed themselves to be sidelined and ritually humiliated by the big two.
Why would voters trust them to stand up to the DUP/SF when they haven't bothered standing up to them since 2007?
Why would voters give them a mandate to `make it work' when they have been willing and complicit partners in the dysfunction of which they complain? Well, as we can see from the election results, the voters didn't trust them to deliver.
Five more years in the Executive will destroy these parties. Stay in and they'll be hollowed out in 2021 when the Assembly is reduced to 90 MLAs.
Stay in and they'll lose any right to complain; as well as losing the right to go into opposition later - the rules don't allow it. Stay in and they'll look greedy, needy, spineless and stupid.
Stay in and they send the message that their campaign manifestos were just self-serving post-its. Stay in now and they'll be shoved further into the wilderness next time around.
Opposition requires courage and coordination. It carries risks. But all those risks outweigh the certainty of what will happen to them if they get sucked back into a world of pretend power and crumbs-from-the-table servitude.
