Governments Celebrating a Good Friday Agreement That No Longer has a Pulse. – Tóibín
At the Aontú North of Ireland Local Election campaign launch in Belfast last night Aontú leader and Meath West TD Peadar Tóibín TD stated;
“For the last two weeks the political establishment have been celebrating the Good Friday Agreement. For sure the Good Friday Agreement was a landmark agreement that brought to an end to decades or horror and violence. The Good Friday Agreement has saved thousands of lives for which society is eternally grateful. But the elephant in the room is Good Friday Agreement is not currently operational. The institutions central to the Good Friday Agreement are for the most part broken, in tatters on the floor. The Assembly is collapsed. The executive is AWOL and the North South Ministerial Council is defunct”.
“The recent celebrations are akin to a birthday party for a person who no longer has a pulse. The Good Friday agreement is no longer a living agreement and the responsibility lays squarely at the door of the Dublin and British Government. The north of Ireland is being held to ransom by the Undemocratic Unionist Party. And this is being allowed to happen by the British and Irish Governments who are supposed to be the guarantors of the Good Friday Agreement. But they are not guaranteeing anything”.
“At the heart of this problem is the DUP with their eyes firmly fixed on the rear-view mirror. When Trimble was in power, he did the same, he allowed every decision he made to be hamstrung by the DUP. Today history is repeating itself. The DUP are firmly focused on what the TUV and Jamie Bryson are doing. Political unionism is a case study in political self harm. Thousands of nationalists and republicans voted for Sinn Féin not because they wanted to but because the after nearly 100 years of the orange state, the DUP would not have the common decency to publicly declare that they would accept a Nationalist or republican First Minister”.
“The DUP accepted the political rules when they were the largest party but would not openly abide the rules if they were in no longer in the ascendancy. The DUP supported Brexit which is the source of their current difficulties, scuppered the Theresa May deal which would have solved their current difficulties, backed the double dealing Boris Johnson, supported the Protocol, then opposed the protocol. And now are at sea over the Irish Sea border. This all for their own narrow party self-interests. If proof were needed of this, they refuse not to show their hand on any return to the political institutions until after the Local Elections in May”.
“Political unionism still believes that they are in a majority. That nothing happens unless they say so. The institutions as they are currently constructed indulge this distorted view of democracy. Until this is resolved the Assembly is cursed to a cycle of collapse and fall. Until this is resolved the people of the north are cursed to a groundhog day real economic hardship. There is a deep hypocrisy is the two Governments are raising a glass to toast the Good Friday Agreement while in practical terms its expiring”.
CRÍOCH
