DUP launch was all about SF

Taking the sip. DUP leader Arlene Foster launching her party’s election manifesto. Pacemaker photo.

 

By Anthony Neeson

It was a Democratic Unionist Party manifesto launch, yet party leader Arlene Foster mentioned Sinn Féin 31 times and Gerry Adams twelve times.

There was no mention of the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) scandal which brought the Stormont government to its knees last month.

Speaking at the start of her address, Mrs. Foster explained that she had “man flu” and that was apparently the reason why she didn’t take any questions from journalists at the end of what was a decidedly low-key manifesto launch.

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Since the election was called it has been apparent that DUP policy has been to divert attention from the botched RHI scheme and the party’s association with it, and to focus unionist attention on the possibility of a Sinn Féin First Minister, something which Mrs. Foster said would give that party a “hugely significant worldwide propaganda boost.”

In last May’s Assembly poll the job of scaring the unionist electorate was much easier with former IRA commander Martin McGuinness leading Sinn Féin in the North.

However, with 40-year-old Michelle O’Neill taking over the reins and with no IRA baggage, that job has been made all the more difficult, thus those twelve references Sinn Féin party president Gerry Adams, who is not running in the North election at all but who, the DUP says, will be “pulling the strings.”

Speaking of the March 2 election, Mrs. Foster said: “I know other parties don’t like us, but the reality is that every vote for another unionist party is a vote which is lost in the battle to make sure that Sinn Féin does not win this election.”

She added: “It would give Gerry Adams and Sinn Féin a hugely significant worldwide propaganda boost just months after nationalism’s worst election since 1993 and would undermine the unionist confidence which is being rebuilt after so many years in decline.

“And finally, it would, of course, give Sinn Féin the right to nominate a first minister. Our job is to make sure that does not happen.”

Foster said that if Sinn Féin became the largest party they would call for a border poll, make power-sharing harder to restore, threaten economic recovery, and allow Sinn Féin to take the politically sensitive justice ministry.

 

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