“UUP not on Executive just to ‘Make up the Numbers’”, Empey warns McGuinness
Ulster Unionist Party Leader Sir Reg Empey today responded to comments made by Deputy First-Minister Martin McGuinness in an interview marking six months of the new power sharing executive. In a statement Sir Reg said,
“There is more to government in Northern Ireland than the egotistical cordial relationship between Martin McGuiness and the First Minister Ian Paisley. I cannot deny that the ‘chuckle brothers’ relationship has come as surprise but Mr McGuinness’ focus on personalities misses the point of why we have reservations and are critical of facets of this new administration. This administration is bigger and about much more than how cosy the relationship between the First and deputy First Minister is.
Already six months in its infancy and we are beginning to see the DUP-Sinn Fein axis at its work, attempting to stymie debate and smother any considered and well intended objections by hiding behind the Ministerial code and corporate responsibility. At its root this is profoundly undemocratic and offers not a working coalition that delivers for all in Northern Ireland but a carve up based on an incompatible Ulster Nationalist agenda as put forward by the DUP and Irish Republican Agenda being pursued by Sinn Fein.
The bottom line is not that we or the SDLP have failed to come to terms with new realities, but that the DUP and Sinn Fein have come to terms with the Institutions and architecture that ourselves and the SDLP sweated blood, sweat and tears over, then offer themselves self-congratulatory pats on the back for doing so. But this is the nature of politics and while hard to stomach, we nevertheless welcome the early stages of normal politics.
But we are not quite at the normal politics stage yet. The DUP and Sinn Fein are more interested in dividing power amongst themselves and polarising our society into DUP and Sinn Fein fiefdoms than building a shared Northern Ireland.
We want to get to the stage where the DUP-Sinn Fein hegemony can be properly and democratically dissected, debated and challenged. A politics where genuine political coalitions can be formed that move away from the tribal, divisive politics of the past that benefits only the two largest parties at Stormont. This is what the UUP is working towards and this is the new reality that both parties will have to deal with. We are not in the Executive just to make up the numbers. The DUP and Sinn Fein better get used to that fact.”