SDLP leader Mark Durkan has begun his party's local government election campaign promising "a stronger agenda for the people we serve than anyone else".
The party is fielding 157 candidates in all but one of Northern Ireland's 26 council areas. Only Carrickfergus is not being contested.
Underscoring at every opportunity the themes of leadership and strength, Mr Durkan claimed the SDLP offered a team combining youth and experience. Just under a third of the team are women and one in six are under 35. Some 94 are seeking re-election while 65 are standing for the first time.
Claiming that his party was made stronger by internal reforms enacted over the past year, Mr Durkan was confident of a strong showing at the polls on May 5th, the same day as the Westminster election.
He characterised the electorate as fed up and disillusioned with the catalogue of political failure since the signing of the Belfast Agreement in 1998.
"Instead of enjoying the decent peace . . . we all deserve, communities are still living under the control of paramilitaries, still afraid to look sideways at the local hard men," he said.
Seven years of political instability, wasted opportunities and increasing polarisation had sickened voters, he said.
They were now tired of political stalemate and "sick of the echo of crime all around them".
He concentrated on the larger political picture, claiming that a vote for the SDLP was "indisputably a mandate for peace, progress and prosperity - the agreement way".
He said support for SDLP candidates would never be quoted to imply acceptance of murder, indifference to robbery or as "evasive cover for a private army's action".