Give us the Justice Ministry or we'll sqweem!

I blogged recently about Alliance's hypocrisy and the party's desperation to get its hands on the justice portfolio. When Sir Reg Empey indicated that the UUP might not accept any deal which the DUP and Sinn Féin concocted, David Ford had something of a strop. And whenever Alliance has a strop about anything, allegations of everyone else's sectarianism are never far behind.

Witness the latest piece of Tweeted petulance from Gerry Lynch (aka Sammy Morse Slugger fans), Alliance candidate for East Antrim.

@ConallMcD If I'd listened to your leader's sectarian, sub-Éirígí, press conference today, I'd be too ashamed to post on Twitter


The target is of course Northern Ireland's newest MLA, Conall McDevitt. His leader's press conference is reported here.

The gist is, predictably, that Sinn Féin and the DUP have locked other parties out of discussions at Hillsborough and should an agreement eventually emerge, whatever it might comprise, it will not have been arrived at by an inclusive process.

Of course Alliance have clearly reached their understanding with the carve-up coalition over policing and justice. They want a ministry, they want it now and anyone who stands in their way is sectarian.

The reality, as I argued previously, is that Alliance is as complicit in Northern Ireland's sectarian system of politics as anyone else. Indeed with their constant harping 'place apart' insularism they have no vision whatever for changing the status quo.

Comments

Jeff Peel said…
Owen I must say on this issue we're at one. The Alliance Party is the most loathsome of our local parties and doesn't deserve the very decent people who tend to vote for it. Pointless and contrived it depends on sectarianism for its existence and has no obvious ideological stance on anything apart from its self-proclaimed niceness.
28 January 2010 at 12:39
thedissenter said…
Hard to understand what has changed since this http://www.davidford.org/news/000225/ford_says_alliance_will_not_take_policing_and_justice_ministry.html
COuld it be the mere whiff of a Ministerial car exhaust.
28 January 2010 at 14:37
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