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A warning for Northern Ireland Assembly First Minister Peter Robinson

By
Irish Voice Editorial,
Published Tuesday, December 1, 2009, 5:02 PM
Updated Tuesday, December 1, 2009, 5:15 PM

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Northern Ireland First Minister Peter Robinson


There are increasing fears that the Northern Ireland Assembly will collapse this side of Christmas because First Minister Peter Robinson of the Democratic Unionist Party refuses to go ahead with the devolution of policing and justice powers.

Robinson is beginning to resemble David Trimble, the former Ulster Unionist leader, who accepted the Good Friday Agreement and then spent the rest of his political life backpedaling away from it.

Ironically, it took the Reverend Ian Paisley to come into power and take the courageous steps that led to the first power-sharing government.

Now Paisley has retired, we are witnessing Trimble mark II in the actions of Robinson, who faces a right wing backlash against his presence in government with Sinn Féin.

Instead of confronting the critics, however, Robinson is sending so many mixed signals that it is impossible to decipher what he intends to do.

When he was in the U.S. recently for the Clinton Global Initiative, he made it clear that he was standing with Sinn Féin Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness and that progress was imminent.

He was hardly back in Ireland when the backpedaling from that position began, and a string of increasingly absurd preconditions began to be put forward.

Robinson must learn that if he wants to be taken seriously over here he cannot speak out of both sides of his mouth and send directly conflicting signals.

He claims he is dedicated to economic investment, but no investor worth a salt will go to a country where the first minister cannot make up his own mind about whether he wants the peace process to work or not. 

Worse, Robinson has clearly bamboozled both the Irish and British governments, and they are forced to go along with his bizarre behavior. They need to grasp the nettle and make clear they will not put up with these antics any longer.

One day he promises action on the devolution issue, the next he decides that he will inject more preconditions into his acceptance of the policing and justice step.

It is not a very clever game, and it is certainly one we have seen many times before from Unionist politicians.  Without exception, all those politicians ended up on the scrap heap of history.

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3 Comments

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Realist | Jan 31, 2010, 10:26 AM EST
Buffalobrave, would you please provide one example of either the DUP or UUP MLAs not wanting to share power with nationalists on an equal basis? Am getting bored with all the baseless one-sided claims.

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Kilsally | Dec 02, 2009, 04:26 PM EST
Actually Peter Robinson is one of the most astute politicians Northern Ireland has. The problem buffalo is that in the recent European elections to the EU Parliament the DUP vote went from 33% to 19% with the difference being accountable to former DUP european MEP Jim Allister who split from the DUP on a hardline anti Sinn Fein / mandatory coalition ticket. Robinson has been taking a very slim line with little room for maneouvre. He has also outlined reform of the Institutions to make the Northern Ireland Assembly more efficient as it has too many representatives compared to Scottish and Welsh devolved institutions. He has proposed a weighted majority system rather than mutual veto - this would ensure cross community support is required whilst stopping some of the deadlock we currently see..ie on education where Sinn Fein with 28% of the vote can override the other parties, SDLP, Alliance, DUP, UUP, PUP and equally so can the DUP with 33% as each represent over half of their `designation`. Mandatory coalition where nearly ALL the parties are in government is not good democracy - we need a system that allows an opposition and which allows the people to elect a different government than the current one aka UK, US ....BUT also recognised Northern Irelands devidied society of two communities..this is where the weighted majority system advocted by Robinson stands out..

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Buffalobrave | Dec 02, 2009, 07:01 AM EST
Peter Robinson is gutless and is a poor excuse for a leader. Besides, unionists can't share power on an equal bases. By sharing power unionists would negate the very reason they insisted on the state being created in the first place.

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