February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
Yet David Trimble, the Ulster Unionist Party chief who can credibly boast of such achievements, enters the election campaign for a new Northern Ireland Assembly under a cloud of gloom and doom. His enemies within his own party and in the Democratic Unionist Party, led by the Rev. Ian Paisley, are confident of scoring a major victory, which would reduce the number of pro-agreement unionists in the assembly to a minority and therefore render parts of the Good Friday agreement inoperable.
These are politicians who have achieved nothing positive in their long careers. Their policies pander to paranoia and bigotry. Their politics are the politics of denial. They have exploited violence and harnessed hatred in order to prevent the emergence of decency and democracy. How is it then that they can feel confident, after the peace process has delivered so much, and they have delivered nothing, about winning at the polls?
It is one of the peculiarities of Northern Ireland politics that realities weigh less than a few symbols or symbolic gestures. Take the fuss over the IRA’s recent decommissioning act. While everyone would have been happier had it been such as to bolster public confidence more than it did, the reality remains. The IRA has ended its war, its political wing is eager to participate fully in the political life north and south, and it has just gotten rid of an enormous amount of deadly material.
In the past, any Unionist leader who could have reliably claimed to have had a hand in bringing that about, surely would have had nothing to fear from any electoral rivals. However, in the North’s political world there are those, powerful and persuasive, who want not only decommissioning, but also the symbol of decommissioning. The gesture comes before the reality.
If reality triumphs this time round, the peace process will move on, delivering further benefits. But if the politics of symbol and gesture win, the long-suffering people of the North will face another period of doubt and uncertainty that they do not deserve. The choice is theirs.