Hurdles still block route to elections

David Trimble, the embattled leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, has scored another victory, the latest at the meeting last Saturday of his party’s ruling Ulster Unionist Council. For the 13th time in a row, he has defeated internal opponents who have been trying to derail his leadership — this time over the issue of the three dissident Unionist MPs at Westminster and what should be done about bringing them into line. Trimble won a respectable 55.2 percent of the vote with his proposal that the three, David Burnside, Jeffrey Donaldson and Martin Smyth, should not be disciplined if they agree to take the party whip, which they abandoned last spring.
Strategically, attention will now shift to Sinn Fein and the republican movement. Republicans have been calling for elections to the Assembly to go ahead as soon as is possible. Along with the Irish government, republicans have been claiming that this is the only way to break the political impasse. Recently, Sinn Fein told RTE that there is no hope of any move from the IRA until a date for elections is declared. However, in order to get Britain to call elections, the Irish government believes that republicans will have to take the first step by indicating through word and deed that they are prepared to meet the demand to abandon paramilitary activity in all its forms. This is the demand, embodied in paragraph 13 of the Joint Declaration issued last spring by Dublin and London, which they failed to meet then, thus postponing the elections on two occasions that had been set for last spring.
Unfortunately, nothing has happened since then to suggest that republicans are any more ready in the fall than they were in the spring to deal with paragraph 13. Indeed, the IRA has made it known that the demand to end all paramilitary activity was unacceptable (as worded in the Joint Declaration).
In fact, within two weeks of the dispute between British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams over what it meant to end all paramilitary actions, the IRA is suspected of having been involved in the kidnapping and murder of a dissident republican in South Armagh, Gareth O’Connor. The IRA has denied the charge and other sources point the finger at the Real IRA, of which O’Connor was a member. But his family and the Northern Ireland police are convinced that it was the IRA — the chief constable, Hugh Orde, blamed it last week. Whatever the truth of the allegations, they constitute a potentially disruptive factor and will certainly be used by those skeptical Unionists who argue that the IRA’s commitment to the peace process remains highly qualified despite the fine words that Sinn Fein’s spokesmen use when attempting to “reassure” Unionists of their good intentions.
Whatever the outcome of the O’Connor controversy, other problems confronting those who want to get elections off the ground and a new government functioning remain just as intimidating. The timetable is one. Nov. 15 is the deadline. By that date, the legislation governing the elections expires and new legislation will have to go through the House of Commons mandating new elections perhaps with another “sunset clause” stipulating the date by which they have to take place. Speculation has it that sometime in April would form the next deadline.
While the Irish government has tended to talk up prospects for moving things forward, it admits privately that there is as yet no indication that the republican movement’s objections to paragraph 13 of the Joint Declaration have been overcome. Officials know that there would have to be a substantial gesture upfront from the IRA before the British government is convinced that the circumstances are ripe for an election battle that would not result in the demise of the UUP at the hands of the anti-agreement Democratic Unionist Party led by the Rev. Ian Paisley.
“Sinn Fein must now take the first step,” said one.
This would have to be accompanied by words from the republican movement committing itself to ending all paramilitary activity at some date following the elections. Both the Irish and British governments believe that if this scenario is played out, then Trimble could go to the Unionist Party with a fairly cast-iron electoral program that would be resistant to the attacks of the anti-agreement factions.
The process is not a one-way street. Republicans will want cast-iron guarantees from the Unionists that a new government would not be subject to the dictates of the UUC, deciding to pull the plug on its party’s participation whenever it does not like the way things are going. But herein lies another fundamental problem, which has to do with the continuing vulnerability of Trimble as the leader of the Unionist Party.
The truth is that even though Trimble has won 13 straight victories over his opponents, remarkably, his position remains as exposed as ever. His latest victory is an example of that. One of his closest supporters, Sir Reg Empey, did not vote and before the meeting held behind-the-scenes talks with Jeffrey Donaldson, Trimble’s leading opponent. Was this an attempt to jump ship and form an alliance with Trimble’s enemies? The party leader now wants to know.
At the Sept. 6 meeting, the UUC voted to instruct the three rebel MPs to resume the party whip. The three simply refused. A disciplinary meeting has been called for Friday to discuss the next step. The decision of a similar meeting held earlier this year to suspend the three ended up in a Belfast court, which ruled that the decision was invalid because the disciplinary body had been unrepresentative of the UUP. The new body meeting on Friday meeting will therefore have to be representative of the party’s feelings. The problem is the UUP is already almost split down the middle over Trimble’s leadership and his support for the Good Friday agreement and any representative body would reflect that split. So even a move to suspend the three MPs could prove extremely divisive. Anything harsher, such as expulsion, is almost certainly out of the question.
In the meantime, whatever the disciplinary hearing decides, it is possible that the three could go back to the UUC and demand yet another meeting.
The British government is also distracted by events surrounding its continued involvement in the occupation of Iraq. Blair’s leadership is now for the first time being seriously questioned. He is meeting with the Irish taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, this Saturday in London for a “private” talk. It would hardly come as a surprise if Ahern found the prime minister’s earlier enthusiasm for resolving the continuing crisis in the peace process somewhat worn down by the constant delays and complications. Like so many British prime ministers before him, Blair may have come to realize that the Irish question is not so quickly or easily resolved.