The return of Michael Stone
By any standards, . Lot's of questions remain to be answered after yesterday's aborted Stormont (inaugural/transitional/shadow: delete where applicable) Assembly session.
1. What did Ian Paisley agree to do? The Assembly Speaker, and some commentators, interpreted the DUP leader's comments as technically satisfying the St Andrews Agreement's terms (that he "indicate" his willingness to enter a coalition with Sinn Fein). Others, including some DUP Assembly members, think he offered a carefully worded statement which fell short of any such "indication". Dr Paisley did not rise to object to the Speaker's interpretation of his words. The DUP leader is not usually behind the door in making his own views abundantly clear. Should we take it that the first significant Hain deadline has been met by both Sinn Fein and the DUP?
2. When, and in what terms, will Sinn Fein "sign up" to policing? Following a grass-roots consultation, Sinn Fein recently "indicated" that it is ready to take a significant step forward on the outstanding issues. Is that enough to meet the terms of the St Andrews Agreement? It's certainly new language. Perhaps since transparency might be an issue for the DUP, this media test will help. Interviewers often ask a Sinn Fein representative to respond to a crime story in the news and try to extract a comment from the spokesperson that "indicates" an openness to cooperate with the ongoing police investigation. Lately, the Sinn Fein reply has been (something like): "We are not upset with anyone who cooperates with the police; and it is also possible to cooperate through the offices of a solicitor rather than going directly to the police." Between now and March, if a power-sharing executive is to be formed, the DUP will be looking to hear something different. Something like, "We encourage everyone who has information that may be useful to the police investigation to make that information available to the police and we pledge ourselves to full cooperation with the police service in building a safer society for us all."
3. How can a Loyalist paramilitary folk hero get as far as the Great Hall of Stormont carrying a handgun and (apparently) some explosive devices? Even though many commentators clearly found the image of Michael Stone being dragged out of the building feet-first by an unarmed female security guard, well ... hilarious. Hilarious or not, it was certainly the stuff of farce. And farce is a word being used by both the UUP and SDLP leaders to describe the political antics taking place simultaneously inside the building.
Comments
By any standards this is bizarre!
William, it is not bizarre by the standards of our country. This is who we are and what we allowed ourselves to become.
A posting in the earlier blog ‘Paisley vs Foster’ indicated that Paisley and McGuinness have a worldview of separation and exclusion, not of ‘oneness’ and ‘forgiveness’.
I speak as one who lost a first cousin with a bullet to the head, followed by an ‘apology’ for the ‘mistake’, and one who has another cousin presently paralyzed from a machine gun attack, followed by a statement of ‘regret’ that he hadn’t been killed.
The theocrats and autocrats, supported (and apparently threatened) by their separate militias, will never meld into democrats. They can only meld into a form of gerontocracy coupled with anarchism.
But several groups will profit handsomely - the militias whose ‘nationalism’ has now led them to the comforts of the drug trade.
With luck they may permit us to have some form of benign kleptocracy.
They will of course continue to beat their drums, puff up in their tribal parades, while preaching and singing their songs of separation and exclusion as all cowards in a mob are wont to do.
How sad it is to be constantly reminded that we seem to have a society of no common principles. We seem to be still prepared to tolerate those who refuse to commune with one another and then not to hold them responsible when their howling masses return to the killing of the innocents.