ANALYSIS:Sinn Féin and the DUP seem to have begun to understand the need to be nice to each other (but they're also covering their backs), writes GERRY MORIARTY
WHO SAYS Peter Robinson doesn’t have a sense of humour? Northern Ireland would enter a team in the negotiations section of the 2012 London Olympics, he said at Hillsborough Castle. It would lift the gold medal and then enter into further negotiations over what flag should be flown and what national anthem played at the winner’s podium.
How the exhausted people in the stately room laughed.
Taoiseach Brian Cowen, British prime minister Gordon Brown, First Minister Robinson, and numerous other politicians and officials, as well as the press pack, wearily exited Hillsborough yesterday wondering would Martin McGuinness be correct in his summation of yesterday’s agreement.
“This might just be the day when the political process in the North came of age,” he said. If Northern politics is moving from tetchy, hormonal adolescence to mature adulthood, then Robinson should crack more jokes. At least it would demonstrate that he and McGuinness, the two most important people in this enterprise, can have a normal human relationship.
There was consensus yesterday that the future of politics here is about, primarily, the DUP and Sinn Féin developing mutual trust in each other. That is hugely important if a weary, frustrated and sceptical public is to be convinced powersharing politics can work.
Parallel to Robinson and McGuinness establishing a reasonably amicable relationship, the DUP and Sinn Féin, under the auspices of the Taoiseach and prime minister, produced a 21-page agreement that has a series of checks and balances to try to ensure each party observes its side of a complicated bargain. There are mechanisms to prevent “bad faith”, as the DUP’s Arlene Foster explained – “clever devices”, was Robinson’s description. While Sinn Féin and the DUP learn to be nice to each other they are also covering their backs.
Sinn Féin has got an April 12th date for the creation of a Department of Justice that is properly part of the Northern Executive, but that also has a degree of autonomy to try to ensure there can be no charges of Sinn Féin, DUP or other Ministers interfering in justice matters. The document is strong on emphasising the operational independence of the PSNI and the judiciary. But equally Sinn Féin must prove it is up for moving on parading.
This is a speedily moving accord. On Monday Robinson and McGuinness convene a meeting of party leaders to consider applications for the justice post, with Alliance leader David Ford still favourite to take that job. On Tuesday they will appoint a six-member working group to agree how contentious parades should be tackled in future.
On February 23rd that working group will complete its work. Presuming that goes as planned on March 9th the Assembly, by cross-community vote, should agree to appoint a Minister for Justice on April 12th. By then Sinn Féin will have seen its chief demand met while there is the guts of a year’s work before any fully operational new parading mechanisms are in place.
The agreement promises a “new and improved framework” on parading but it appears clear from the paper that the Parades Commission will only be replaced or enhanced if there is a better structure to replace it with. In terms of certainty on the two key issues Sinn Féin has gained most.
Otherwise, the agreement is rather woolly or aspirational in relation to improving North-South structures and promoting the Irish language. There is no Irish language act, as promised in the St Andrews Agreement, but side talk of a strategy and money for the language and for Ulster Scots.
That lack of specific commitment could explain why Gerry Adams was being a tad provocative, complaining about the governments and talking again about “staging posts”. And again he didn’t specify a staging post to what but it’s a loaded phrase that means only one thing to unionists – that yesterday was another milestone passed on the road to a united Ireland. It was almost certainly used to reassure supporters that the ultimate republican agenda remained intact but also to annoy unionists – especially considering how he juxtaposed these comments with references to some remaining “dinosaurs” in the DUP.
That was just “diversionary therapy” for Adams’ own hardline troops because the elements dealing with issues such as the Irish language and beefing up North-South co-operation were rather vague, explained a talks source.
The reassuring words of statesmanship and conciliation came from McGuinness who, after all, is the man who must do business with Robinson and demonstrate that the complex system of powersharing — so hard fought for — does work.
“I believe in a united Ireland and they [unionists] want to maintain the union with England,” he said. “This should not mean that we are incapable of respecting one another, of treating one another as equals and proceeding on the basis of partnership, respect, fairness and equality.”
If those words are spoken in good faith, and if Robinson and his party reciprocate, then what was finally agreed yesterday is significant and important and could be a pathway to a viable form of politics.
Ulster Unionist leader Sir Reg Empey and his colleagues decided to snub the Taoiseach and prime minister, but given their experience over the past two weeks, the two leaders should be used to such discourtesy. Sir Reg’s strategy appeared to be that a boycott would help to make the UUP more relevant. There is a real danger it could work the opposite way.
The UUP is the party of “moderate” unionism and here was Sir Reg standing on the same territory as Jim Allister’s anti-agreement Traditional Unionist Voice. This after the UUP cosying up to the British Conservatives, then talking to the DUP under the auspices of the Orange Order, then jettisoning Robinson and reverting to the UUP-Tory liaison.
It doesn’t make sense, particularly when David Cameron was supportive of the agreement. The potential next Conservative prime minister decidedly does not want “the Irish Question” on his agenda were he to take residence in Downing Street in the summer. He hardly wants Sir Reg to be threatening the deal. Ulster Unionists appear lost.
Ford can wait for the justice ministry to be handed to him, hoping that the politicians don’t blow this opportunity in the final remaining few yards to the finish line, while wondering will his job be a poisoned chalice.
SDLP leader Mark Durkan, while still irritated that his party won’t assume the justice portfolio as would have happened under the temporarily discarded d’Hondt system for appointing ministers, had the strategic sense to recognise that a deal is better than no deal – unlike the UUP.
He can bow out as leader at his party’s annual conference this weekend, happy about his significant and positive contribution to the peace process over many years and happy too that the Hillsborough Castle Agreement can be a staging post to a more stable Northern Ireland – regardless of what is to happen constitutionally in the generations ahead.
Sufficient for the day ... and yesterday in terms of the peace process was a good day.
Gerry Moriarty is Northern Editor