Unionist obstructionism continues to block Agreement
By Mary Maguire
This week unfolded with a guillotine vote on Monday, indicating
urgent need for all the aspects of the Good Friday Agreement to be
fully and immediately implemented. The Interim report on the assembly
departments and all-Ireland bodies was adopted with an overwhelming
74 to 27 votes.
The massive vote confirms what Sinn Féin has been saying for months:
David Trimble's position is secure and he has shown his capacity for
silencing any potential dissident voices. For the first time since
the referendum, David Trimble stood against the no faction. His
overwhelming support within the UUP was confirmed at the time of the
vote. This is a basis upon which he can build to defeat the
anti-Agreement lobby.
However, the interim document produced was not the report which the
Assembly members were promised. The approval of the report on all
aspects of the Assembly departments and the All-Ireland structures
were initially set to be approved at once. It was at the last moment,
at the insistence of the Ulster Unionists that David Trimble and
Seamus Mallon agreed that a vote on what was to become a final report
was delayed until next month.
While Monday's vote cleared the way for substantive work to be done,
it potentially represents for David Trimble a new instrument to try
and delay the setting up of an inclusive executive. There is growing
concern that approval of the final recommendations, scheduled for 15
February, will be the occasion of renewed unionist blocking tactics.
Sinn Féin has become increasingly sceptical as none of the deadlines
have so far been respected and this despite the fact that the
Agreement outlines clear timetables and a chronology for the
establishment of various institutions. The delaying tactics and the
``go-slow'' strategy of the Ulster Unionists has already caused months
of delay in the creation of the new powersharing Executive and
all-Ireland bodies.
David Trimble is expected to attempt to further delay the
implementation of the Good Friday Agreement by, among others, getting
the Dublin and London government to acquiesce to his game plan and
exclude Sinn Féin on the pretext of a spurious precondition.
Ironically, it was during Monday's debate that, for the first time
since the beginning of his stalling strategy, David Trimble said that
he was wrong when in the speech he recognised that the Agreement
contained no preconditions for Sinn Féin's entry into an inclusive
Executive. He begrudgingly admitted: ``I have heard some Members state
that there is no precondition for entry to the Executive. They may be
right, but in a very narrow, technical sense only.''
The prospect of more delays is also alarming, given that the
procedural motions that accompany the final reports will be the basis
upon which Dublin and London are set to transfer power to the
Assembly by 10 March.
Sinn Fein also retained considerable reservations about the way the
negotiations in the run-up to the 18 December Agreement on the
all-Ireland bodies and the Assembly departments were conducted. After
unionists pulled out of a deal made with the British Prime Minister
on 2 December, Sinn Fein was ``cut out'' of the negotiations leading to
a watered-down arrangement made with the SDLP on 18 December.
Despite promises given by the SDLP literally hours before the final
elements of the deal were put into place, the Ulster Unionist party
and the SDLP chose to run to the media without informing the waiting
Sinn Féin team. This disgraceful behaviour and flagrant opportunism
contradicts the inclusive spirit of the Good Friday Agreement.
The outcome of these negotiations has also caused concern. The
consequence of what Sinn Féin chairperson Mitchel McLaughlin
described as the ``SDLP solo run'' is that the Agreement falls short of
nationalist expectations.
The opposition of the SDLP and the UUP to the setting up of the
Equality Department was a fundamental blunder.
The deal on this issue leaves Equality to be dealt with somewhere
between the First and Deputy First ministers. This rejection is a
major sop to unionism. It opens the door to the possibility of the
issue of Equality to be treated as a side-issue and therefore
encouraging severe criticism from a community who will feel betrayed.
Nationalists who voted in favour of the Good Friday Agreement also
attached major importance to the remit, strength and dynamic of the
Ministerial Council and the All-Ireland implementation bodies. But as
the negotiations concluded, even these bodies were greatly restricted
in their functions.
The decisions to remove inward investment from the Trade Promotion,
Business Development and Inward Investment body, to further restrict
the powers of that body with regard to trade promotion and business
development, to limit the number of implementation bodies to the
absolute minimum laid down in the Agreement and to make the Tourism
body a publicly owned limited company rather than an implementation
body as before were taken without Sinn Féin support. These decisions
were both unnecessary and negative.
The recent developments have once again shed light on the traditional
unionist exclusionist politics of the past. David Trimble is still
refusing to include Sinn Féin in the power-sharing government that is
one of the pillars of the Good Friday Agreement. He is using the
discredited argument of potential dissidets within his party to
legitimise the exclusion of Sinn Féin ministers.
In the past weeks, he has been helped by the SDLP who have
effectively provided a political cover to the Unionists destructive
tactics. The need for a genuine approach based on inclusivity is more
vital than ever. The implementation of the Good Friday Agreement has
already been delayed on false pretensions that Sinn Féin's
participation is subject to preconditions. The spirit of the
Agreement is now flawed by the violation of the principle of
inclusiveness.
It therefore remains to be seen if these next weeks will see an end
to the old unionist politics of exclusion. The presentation of the
final document on the Assembly departments and the All-Ireland bodies
on 15 February must not become another occasion for David Trimble to
try and renegotiate the Good Friday Agreement.
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