Republican News · Thursday 29 May 2003

Demanding our rights

Martin McGuinness is pictured with Sinn Féin's Assembly members and TDs outside Leinster House on Wednesday, making their demand for Assembly elections

Sinn Féin Assembly members, MPs and TDs have called on people to come out today, Thursday 29 May, to protest the cancellation of the elections and demand the right to vote. Events have been organised in over 30 towns and cities across the island, including: Dublin, Belfast, Derry, Cork, Letterkenny, Galway, Wexford, Kildare, Athlone, Sligo, Limerick, Tralee, Waterford, Omagh, Enniskillen, Lurgan, and Strabane. Events will also take place in Britain and in cities across the United States. Speaking in Dublin on Wednesday afternoon, Sinn Féin Chairperson Mitchel McLaughlin said:

"Tomorrow, hundreds of thousands of people throughout the Six Counties should be going to the polls to elect 108 Assembly members and a new cross-party Executive. Instead, the British government has cancelled the elections, shut down the political institutions and created a dangerous political vacuum.

"The cancelling of the elections is wrong and was taken against the wishes of people across the island of Ireland. It is imperative that the British government reverse this decision and set a date for the Assembly elections. I am calling on people to come out tomorrow and demand the right to vote."

"To make conflict a thing of the past and to allow politics to work there has to be a viable political, democratic and peaceful alternative to war," said Martin McGuinness. "The logic of this was accepted not only in the Good Friday Agreement itself, but also in the recently published Joint Declaration.

"The British government had no right to cancel elections in Ireland and the Irish government and indeed all the parties in Leinster House were right to oppose their decision. But that opposition can't be just token opposition - it must be real and vocal opposition.

"The Irish government's status as a joint and co-equal partner in the Good Friday Agreement has to be restored, recognised and defended. Accepting or meekly going along with the British decision is aiding the subversion of democracy that their actions represent.

"The key to making politics work is democracy. That means that people have the right to vote. It means elections and it means elections immediately."