Opinion

John Manley: Real leadership required to restore stability

Sinn Fein president Mary Lou McDonald, former leader Gerry Adams and Deputy First Minister Michelle O'Neill at the funeral of Bobby Storey. Picture by Pacemaker Press
Sinn Fein president Mary Lou McDonald, former leader Gerry Adams and Deputy First Minister Michelle O'Neill at the funeral of Bobby Storey. Picture by Pacemaker Press Sinn Fein president Mary Lou McDonald, former leader Gerry Adams and Deputy First Minister Michelle O'Neill at the funeral of Bobby Storey. Picture by Pacemaker Press

TODAY’S assembly debate offers an opportunity to take the heat out of a controversy that has flared up intermittently for the past nine months.

The Public Prosecution Service’s announcement that it will review the decision not to prosecute any of the 24 Sinn Féin members interviewed by police means inevitably there will be another chapter written, no doubt replete with outrage and calls for rolling heads.

However, in the meantime perhaps one element of this multi-threaded saga can be put to bed and a degree of stability restored to an executive that is sliding dangerously towards terminal dysfunction.

Sinn Féin has doggedly dug itself into a hole by giving precedence to republican symbolism and tradition over political common sense.

Unionism has reacted with characteristic anger, yet it is a mistake to view or present this episode through the usual prism of regional politics - or what is often crudely described as a ‘green versus orange issue’.

Just because unionism shouts loudest, it shouldn’t obscure other, moderate voices.

Sinn Féin MP John Finucane has publicly acknowledged that mistakes were made but the leadership could go further, making what Alliance’s Stephen Farry termed an “unambiguous and unqualified apology”.

This would effectively remove Sinn Féin, as much as practicably possible, from the storm, leaving the DUP to fight it out with the chief constable and the PPS. Bad feeling wouldn’t evaporate overnight but it would help calm heads.

The executive is already in a bad place, with months of wrangling over the Covid response sucking out all the oxygen and leaving little space to address other matters. Some may view this as a positive but in terms of moving society forward and tackling countless ‘bread and butter’ issues, it gets us nowhere.

Political unionism is presently in a confused and uncertain state, seeking scapegoats for its own missteps.

Indulging its reductivism by failing to concede previous shortcomings will only hinder competent governance further, likely leading to another collapse of the institutions, that will prove much harder to restore than last time.

At most there’s been brief flashes of proper leadership in evidence over the past year. In these increasingly stormy seas, a change of tack is well overdue.