For anyone who read or heard my recent speech in Oxford to say that I have called for an end to power-sharing is a wilful lie.
My speech was a robust defence of the Good Friday Agreement’s power-sharing structures of democratic inclusion. I spelled out why the right of all parties to be included in government according to their mandate was at the core of the Agreement and wh
y its rules must be adhered to.
It is actually Sinn Fein who, while misrepresenting me, are planning to abandon and subvert the Agreement’s power-sharing rules. Perhaps it is another example of a “big lie” from Sinn Fein to distract from the reality of their conniving to by-pass the d’Hondt principle in the appointment of a Justice Minister.
More than anyone else, I wrote and negotiated Ministers appointed by d’Hondt into the Agreement. Sinn Fein offered nothing in those talks on inclusive government except to snipe at the SDLP – inside and outside – for even advocating power-sharing. As reluctant late-comers to power-sharing they have no right to pose as its champions. Especially, just as they are about to collude with the DUP to breach it.
I have consistently rejected all demands, offers or arguments for voluntary coalition in Northern Ireland during the Agreement’s negotiations and since. I still do.
Far from advocating any departure from the inclusion rules of the Agreement, the SDLP and I have resisted the attempts by others to do so at Leeds Castle, in the so-called “Comprehensive Agreement” in December 2004 and in the documents and draft legislation in the whole run-up to St Andrews.
In all of these Sinn Fein and the DUP agreed that the law would be changed to exclude from ministerial office any party who did not vote for them as First and Deputy First Ministers. Under the open inclusion of the Agreement, the DUP and Sinn Fein supplied ministers even though they voted against or abstained in the vote for First and Deputy First Minister.
The democratic inclusion principle in the Agreement is that parties are entitled to office according to their own mandate. But they, with the two governments, were prepared to insist that the UUP and SDLP could only take office if they submitted their mandate to Sinn Fein and the DUP – no longer by our own mandates. Peter Hain produced draft legislation to this effect and it was only the SDLP’s negotiation with the DUP which stopped it.
During our challenges to this new anti-agreement exclusion law we were told “everywhere else (eg the South, Scotland, Wales and the continent) you can only be in government if you vote confidence in the head of government”.
