SDLP, S.F. clash over transfers

In all 18 six-seater constituencies, the final one or two seats will be determined by the lower preferences on voters’ ballots, making transfers critical to the outcome, and the result impossible to predict.
In the Unionist camp, the DUP is openly calling on its supporters not to transfer to the Ulster Unionists. In the nationalist camp, the SDLP and Sinn Fein are taking slightly, but strategically important, different lines.
Sinn Fein is urging its supporters, after they’ve voted for all available party candidates, to “maximize nationalist representation,” which, said Martin McGuinness, does not take a genius to interpret as a suggestion to vote SDLP.
The SDLP, on the other hand, once voters have supported all its candidates, are urging them to vote for, unspecified, pro-agreement candidates, whether unionist or nationalist, depending on the constituency.
SDLP members are accusing Sinn Fein canvassers of urging voters, in private, not to transfer to them, but this claim is angrily denied by republicans, who say their public and their private recommendations are the same.
The SDLP says it’s more important for voters to make individual assessments in each of the 18 constituencies how their ballot can be cast most in favor of pro-agreement candidates, rather than transfer to Sinn Fein.
The row became even more bitter when the Sinn Fein president, Gerry Adams, said he would not recommend any transfers in his West Belfast constituency to the SDLP’s Alex Attwood, although Joe Hendron, Attwood’s runningmate, was deserving.
It led the SDLP to accuse Sinn Fein of risking a seat in West Belfast going to either the UUP or DUP instead. It was just one of several hostile exchanges between the two parties in the last full week of electioneering.
A further headache for the UUP leader, David Trimble, came with news that anti-agreement candidates within his party are to launch their own election “charter,” seen as a harder-line rival to the official UUP manifesto.
Jeffrey Donaldson and other anti-agreement candidates have been noticeable by their absence from Trimble’s side in party political broadcasts and press conferences.
It appears they are hoping to attract DUP lower-vote transfers by stiffening their anti-agreement position, although the DUP are urging their supporters not to be tempted into voting for any UUP candidate, as every ballot will be interpreted by Trimble as a pro-agreement Unionist vote.
The SDLP appealed to its voters not to transfer to anti-agreement UUP candidates. “Jeffrey Donaldson and other anti-agreement UUP figures have made their agenda clear. They want to work with the DUP. That means that they want to wreck the agreement,” said the SDLP’s Alban Maginnis.
While Donaldson and company are strikingly absent from collective UUP public statements, for different reasons, the DUP leader, the Rev. Ian Paisley, has been taking a far lower profile. It’s thought this is partly because of his age (he’s 77) and partly because his blustering image is unattractive to younger unionist voters.
As polling day approaches, the DUP and Sinn Fein are beginning to adopt policies to take effect after the Nov. 26 Assembly elections, assuming both win seats, as expected, at the expense of the Ulster Unionists and SDLP.
Sinn Fein’s McGuinness, while predicting the DUP will not outpoll the UUP because of the “incredible wisdom” of the unionist electorate, is also predicting the DUP will come to terms with his party outstripping the SDLP.
The DUP, on the other hand, is confidently predicting it will win at least six seats at the UUP’s expense and end Trimble’s leadership, resulting in a renegotiation of the Good Friday agreement.
The DUP’s Gregory Campbell said that “nationalists and republicans are going to have to face the choice between long term [British] direct rule or a new agreement.”
The DUP have an effective veto, he said. “Nationalists should learn that an agreement with the UUP cannot last and that only a deal which the DUP support will survive.”