KENNEDY SAYS DUP AND SINN FEIN ARE BEHIND THE SCENES FIXERS INTENT ON NARROW PARTY SELF-INTEREST RATHER THAN THE PUBLIC GOOD
Speaking at Knock and Ballyhackamore Ulster Unionist Branch AGM, Ulster Unionist deputy Leader, Danny Kennedy MLA, said :
“The one thing political observers in Northern Ireland have become aware of in the past year are the warning signs that the DUP and Sinn Fein have done yet another deal behind closed doors and are in the process of selling that deal to a public they consider to be putty in their manipulative hands.”
“We had evidence of this in the past week when Ian Paisley Junior said he would offer leadership on the issue of the devolution of policing and justice to be rapidly followed by the unedifying spectacle of an unruly public meeting of the Consultative Group on the Past, following heavily staged leaks that the troubles were to be regarded as a war rather than a terrorist campaign.”
“No doubt, having worked up a spurious debate on the issue of whether the suffering inflicted on innocent civilians for thirty five years was a war or a murderous terrorist campaign, the inevitable collapse of that ridiculous assertion will be hailed as a victory by the DUP and, on the back of that artificially created debate, that party, having created the wriggle room they need to get away with it, will then deliver on the secret promises it has made behind closed doors to Sinn Fein during the St Andrew’s Agreement negotiations - or offer leadership as they put it.”
“The sequence of deals being made behind firmly closed doors between the DUP and Sinn Fein over a whole range of issues is not only in danger of excluding the smaller parties from ownership of these DUP-Sinn Fein decisions but it will also leave the public behind.”
“The issue that best brings this out is the devolution of policing and justice. There is, quite simply, no demand or appetite for this from the wider unionist community. Yet here we have Junior Minister Ian Paisley offering what he calls “leadership” on this issue. I don’t think the people want to be “led” anywhere.”
“What we need to ask is what is the deal cut by the DUP and Sinn Fein - of which Mr Paisley’s comments no doubt form a sequenced part ? Will there be another six months slippage with the deal being done in October rather than May, if past form is anything to go by?”
“What are the behind the scenes shopping lists of the two big parties ? Have those shopping lists anything to do with the well-being of the people or have they more to do with a shopping list of “goodies” for the two big parties ? No doubt what we are really being asked to believe – or swallow – is that what is good for the DUP is good for Northern Ireland.”
“The two big parties, the DUP and Sinn Fein, are both set on self-gratification, on what could be called a carve-up of the spoils of office. Both are intent on following agendas which are to the benefit and self-interest of those two parties but which have little or nothing to do with the well-being or interests of the people of Northern Ireland.”
“The tragedy in all of this is that neither of these monolithic bullies – Sinn Fein or the DUP – have any ideas when it comes to rebuilding Northern Ireland and its economy. Their programme is lacking in imagination which is really all you could expect from two command and control structures which prize and value control freakery over ideas.”
“Producing a Programme for Government and a Budget, after a motion I proposed in the Assembly asking where these items were after 6 months of inactivity, forced their hand, and was like watching an elephant giving birth to a pea. The Programme was, on the whole, banal and uninspiring. It lacked vision and looked, in the main, like a civil service rehash.”
“In devolving policing and justice both the DUP and Sinn Fein are seeking to increase their patronage and extend their control and dominance in this double-lock vice-like grip or stranglehold which Sinn Fein and the DUP currently have on political life in Northern Ireland.”
“At some point people will tire of the self-interested political fixing of the DUP and Sinn Fein and they will ask – what is really in this for us ?”