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At long last, Donaldson moves

February 16, 2011

By Staff Reporter

After five years of working inside the Ulster Unionist Party trying to undermine the party leader, David Trimble, Donaldson resigned. The Democratic Unionist Party is waiting with open arms to welcome him into the Rev. Ian Paisley’s fold, though “fold” is hardly the word for a political enclosure that probably contains more wolves than sheep.
Donaldson left the UUP and brought with him Arlene Foster and Norah Beare. The loss of these three reduces the UUP to 24 seats in the assembly. It is now on a par with Sinn Fein, which also has 24 seats. If Donaldson, Foster and Beare join the DUP, it would give Paisley’s party 33 seats and a majority of nine over the UUP.
It does not need a mathematical genius to do the sums. They do not add up to an optimistic outlook for the pro-agreement parties. The 33 DUP seats, added to the five or so anti-agreement Unionists still within the ranks of the UUP, plus an anti-agreement independent unionist, gave those opposed to the current settlement a huge anti-agreement block within the unionist community. It is hard to see how, under the current voting arrangements, there will be any chance of restoring a power-sharing executive any time soon.
However, in the unlikely event of a new deal emerging, the DUP would be entitled to take the post of first minister as well as four ministerial positions, compared to the three that it had in the previous government. Those who still harbor some optimism suggest that such a prospect of power will tempt the DUP back into government.
The assembly has been suspended since Oct. 14, 2002, thanks to a threat from Trimble to pull out after allegations surfaced that the IRA were running a spy ring in Stormont. After over a year went by, with the British government postponing elections on two occasions, they went ahead last month and delivered the current stalemate, as feared and predicted by many. The result brought to a head the conflict within the UUP between Trimble and Donaldson, precipitating the latter’s move.
Trimble and others have tried to put a favorable gloss on the resignations of the three UUP members, arguing that it will now allow the party to present more of a united front. They say that it will also free Trimble from the constant threat from the convening of the party’s ruling body, the Ulster Unionist Council, to challenge his leadership — a tactic Donaldson and his backers used constantly over the last five years to plunge the party into crisis after crisis. However, the problem for Trimble is that Donaldson’s departure may well have removed the leadership challenge from within his party. But in doing so it has created a new center of gravity for unionism outside the UUP.
Speaking of Donaldson’s abandonment of the UUP, Paisley called it “a momentous decision that will deal a hammer blow to the Ulster Unionist Party.” Alex Kane, one of Trimble’s advisers, underlined the seriousness of the situation. He reportedly warned him that: “The party has maybe four to six months in which it can tackle its difficulties. If the party remains unreformed, if the Ulster Unionist Council remains uncontrollable, then I think within a year the party would cease to exist.” Others have said that the UUP could become a minority rump within Unionism. The ghost of Brian Faulkner beckons from the shadows. Faulkner, the last Unionist leader to try to take his party into a comprehensive and groundbreaking deal with nationalists, ended up the head of the Unionist Party of Northern Ireland, which vanished from the political landscape within a few years of its formation.
Despite these gloomy predictions, Trimble remains confident that putting the DUP in the driver’s seat will only prove to the people of Northern Ireland that it has nowhere to go. He is in a far stronger position than Faulkner. To begin with, he remains head of the UUP, from which Faulkner was forced out when he failed to secure the party’s backing for the power-sharing experiment. The British and Irish governments have repeatedly said that the Good Friday agreement is not up for renegotiation. The DUP ran its election promising to do just that. The two positions would appear irreconcilable, and deadlock therefore inevitable.
However, the review of the agreement begins in January. Donaldson is being asked to join the DUP’s negotiating team to press for changes. Unfortunately for Paisley and Donaldson, the British and Irish governments could not permit any substantial changes to the package without alienating the nationalists, thus duplicating the problems they currently have with unionists. The only hope for a deal, it is thought, is if the DUP is willing to sell some minor changes to the package to its followers as a “renegotiation.”
Donaldson might be tempted in this direction, since he was part of the UUP team that negotiated the original agreement in 1998. What prompted Donaldson’s walkout on that occasion was his view that there was no mechanism within the agreement to pressure republicans to begin decommissioning their weapons. This issue still lies behind all the others. Even if the DUP were inclined to disguise some minor changes as a new agreement, it would still face the overwhelming issue of Sinn Fein and the continued existence of the IRA. Both Donaldson and Paisley see eye to eye on that. All the tinkering in the world would not convince Paisley to allow his party to go into government with Sinn Fein while the IRA remains a factor. He will also be disinclined to move toward accommodation with nationalists before the European elections next June.
Whether the presence of Donaldson and company would change the dynamics of the DUP and strengthen the so-called pragmatic wing of the party remains to be seen. The newcomer will find a very different culture there and freedoms that he enjoyed in the UUP do not apply, such as criticize your leader. For Donaldson, those days are well and truly gone.

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