To Trimble's constituents, flexibility is a weakness (Boston Globe) -- Irish Media Watch Message Board

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Date Posted: 08:09:31 05/13/05 Fri GMT
Author: Lynn
Subject: To Trimble's constituents, flexibility is a weakness (Boston Globe)

To Trimble's constituents, flexibility is a weakness
Ulster Unionist trounced in vote
By Kevin Cullen, Globe Staff | May 8, 2005
There is an old saying about politics in Northern Ireland: If you stand in the middle of the road, you'll get knocked down

David Trimble learned that the hard way Thursday in Britain's parliamentary election. Trimble's Ulster Unionists, the middle-of-the-road party that represents moderate Protestants who want Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom, were knocked down and run over by the Democratic Unionists led by the Rev. Ian Paisley, a fundamentalist preacher.

Seven years after Trimble shared the Nobel Peace Prize for leading unionists to accept the historic compromise with Irish nationalists known as the Good Friday Agreement, he was trounced and bounced out of office by his Democratic Unionist challenger, David Simpson. Trimble, who has led the party for 10 years, resigned yesterday after presiding over the Ulster Unionists' worst electoral performance since Northern Ireland's first government was formed in 1921.

Trimble's willingness to give Irish republicans who support Sinn Fein and the Irish Republican Army the benefit of the doubt was seen internationally as a sign of strength. But as the local power-sharing assembly shut down repeatedly over assertions that the IRA continued to engage in criminal and paramilitary activity, Trimble's flexibility came to be seen by his own constituents as a sign of weakness.

The Ulster Unionists lost five of their six seats in the House of Commons as Paisley's DUP took half of the 18 seats in Northern Ireland. On the Irish nationalist side, Sinn Fein added to its standing as the party that represents most Catholics in Northern Ireland. It did so despite a torrent of criticism over its continued links to the IRA following allegations that the IRA was behind a $50 million bank heist in Belfast last December and the murder of a Belfast man during a pub brawl on Jan. 30.

But the moderate nationalist party, the Social Democratic and Labor Party, did not slip nearly as precipitously as the Ulster Unionists, losing only one of its four seats to Sinn Fein, which increased to five. Many analysts say that the same Protestant voters who voted for the DUP, viewing them as more formidable negotiators against Sinn Fein, used the proportional-representation voting system to cast their second- preference ballots for Mark Durkan, leader of the Social Democratic and Labor Party, to deny Sinn Fein's Mitchel McLaughlin the seat in Derry.

In South Belfast, Alasdair McDonell, the deputy leader of the Social Democratic and Labor Party, was elected as the unionist candidates split their votes. According to many analysts, the SDLP did better, and Sinn Fein did not do quite as well as expected.

Compared with the 2001 British election results, the gap between unionist moderates and hard-liners widened more dramatically than on the nationalist side, underscoring polls suggesting that unionists want a harder negotiating line when it comes to a final settlement: the DUP's percentage of the vote was up 11 percent, with the Ulster Unionists down 9 percent; Sinn Fein's gain was a more moderate 2.6 percent, with the SDLP down 3.5 percent. Still, Sinn Fein's electoral gains followed a period of criticism and enormous pressure on the party, including from Washington.

But the consensus that the hard-liners have increased their power in Northern Ireland, making prospects for a final settlement more remote, is being challenged by those deemed by their critics as extremists.

Sinn Fein's Pat Doherty, who retained the seat that he, as well as other colleagues from the party, refuse to take in the British Parliament, said the political paradigm in Northern Ireland has changed, so that the old labels of hard-liners and extremists don't fit. While the 79-year-old Paisley continues to denounce republicans with biblically tinged rhetoric, Doherty said many of the younger members of the DUP are more interested in wielding political power and realize that to do so they will have to share it with Sinn Fein. He said it is a question of when, not if.

There is no chance the DUP will share power with Sinn Fein, however, unless the IRA goes out of business. Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, who cruised to reelection in West Belfast, called on the IRA last month to abandon its armed struggle and have its members work for a united Ireland exclusively through democratic means. Adams's critics suggested it was a cynical ploy aimed at getting moderate nationalists to cast their vote for Sinn Fein.

But many analysts, as well as senior officials in the Irish and British governments, say Adams would not have asked the IRA to stand down unless he was sure the answer would be yes. The IRA said it is considering Adams's request, and its reply is expected in the coming weeks or months.

Alex Attwood, the SDLP candidate who had the unenviable task of challenging Adams, worries that a DUP ''giddy with power" over swamping its unionist rivals will be reluctant to do a deal, even if the IRA announces it is disbanding. Other analysts predict the DUP will wait a year or more before seriously considering making a deal. Meanwhile, moderates are left to ponder how to regain ground in a political landscape that has shifted dramatically.

After studying the election results, Paul Bew, a longtime adviser to Trimble, was moved, in yesterday's Irish Independent, to quote from William Butler Yeats: ''Things fall apart; the center cannot hold. . . . The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity."

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