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Editorial / Periscope - Niall O'Dowd

The New Partners

June 11, 2008

Editorial

MARTIN McGuinness of Sinn Fein and Peter Robinson of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) took office last week as Northern Ireland’s deputy first minister and first minister respectively. Under the complicated system of governance, both men have essentially equal power to run the province and both must commit to cross party agreements on all the major issues of the day.

It was a close run thing, only occurring after British Prime Minister Gordon Brown had both men to 10 Downing Street to talk out their differences on critical issues, before they both agreed to go ahead. Brown also met separately with Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, who left him in no doubt about concerns over unionist stalling.

Sinn Fein had sent a clear message that they might stay out of the government if there was not a meeting of the minds with the DUP on several important issues. They believed the DUP had been deliberately stalling on addressing such problems as oversight of policing in the past few months.

Then there are the fears about how well the new tandem will work together. Whereas Robinson’s predecessor, the Reverend Ian Paisley, and McGuinness were called the “Chuckle Brothers” because of their benign attitude to each other, McGuinness and Robinson have already been dubbed the “Brother’s Grimm” because there is a very different dynamic at work.

Part of that is personality. Nobody would confuse Robinson, a dour former real estate agent who has waited much of his political life to take over from Paisley, with his predecessor, who in his later incarnation as a politician, was all hail fellow well met.

But Robinson has nothing like the grip on his party, the DUP, that Paisley had. He has problems to his left and right, among those who believed the DUP has moved too quickly or not quickly enough to seize the reins of power with Sinn Fein.

Robinson is more afraid of the right wing cabal who are lying in wait. To this end he has refused to date to move on issues of major concern to Nationalists such as the restoration of oversight over policing to the Assembly.

Robinson fears, above all, a fast moving splinter group led by former party member Jim Alistair, a European MP whose new party did surprisingly well in a local election recently against the DUP.

But the stage has been set for some time for the final outworking of the St. Andrews Agreement between all the parties. A small Unionist rump cannot be allowed to control events, as was the case so often in the past.

Robinson is a canny politician who has impressed in his government portfolio of finance. Now he needs to show that he is capable of leadership as joint head of the government.

The differences before McGuinness and Robinson pale in comparison to the extraordinary battles the two sides had in the past on the rocky road to the peace process.

Nonetheless, both men will need to give it everything in order to nail down the final pieces of the peace process and ensure a stable future.

They are both talented politicians who have overcome many obstacles to get to this point in their political careers. Now what remains is to get across the finishing line on the issues that continue to divide them.

Given what has been achieved to date and how many hurdles have been overcome, that should not prove too difficult.

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