Policing and justice keystone
SINN Fein may yet regret their decision to take things to the wire over the devolution of policing and justice. They meet the DUP for further talks today and they may find it difficult to keep the discussion focused on their own narrow agenda of a timetable for devolution.
It will need legislation, but it looks as if Sinn Fein may be able to secure the change they want some time before next year's European election.
The problem for them, is that the price for change will go beyond an assurance that the IRA army council has no plans to meet. The whole network of sectarian checks and balances which were put in place following the Good Friday and St Andrews Agreement will also be on the DUP's shopping list.
This involves the system of community designation at the Assembly, under which nationalist and unionist blocks have distinct communal rights. The outworking of this system includes the d'Hondt formula for nominating ministers and the requirement that the Executive must be a compulsory coalition of every major party.
To borrow the language of the Good Friday Agreement itself, we are now seeing the beginning of "sufficient consensus" to move on.
A crucial first blow was struck by Mark Durkan in a speech at the weekend. He pointed to the "arguably sectarian or sectional undertones" of such arrangements, characterising them as "the ugly scaffolding needed during the construction of the new edifice".
Scaffolding is generally essential for safety and convenience when a building is under construction. If a dome or an arch is involved, scaffolding physically supports the structure until the final keystone is in place and the forces of gravity take over.
For the Executive, the keystone is the transfer of policing and justice powers. That, as Sinn Fein points out, will mark the completion of the devolution programme set out at St Andrews. Then Stormont will have to stand or fall on its own.
Durkan's "ugly scaffolding" got us this far, and agreement would never have been reached without it, but there is a downside. The elaborate system of interlocking vetoes at Stormont hamstrings decision-making by putting a premium on digging your heels in and taking every issue down to the wire.
Policing and justice is a case in point. Sinn Fein has been frustrated on other issues and badly wants movement to show their own following that the republican tribe could deliver on St Andrews. The DUP blocked them, partly because it wanted to show its followers that the unionist tribe was no pushover. Gerry Adams countered by threatening to use his veto to stymie the appointment of Peter Robinson as First Minister. Now Adams is blocking the holding of Executive meetings as a further lever.
Under this system, every decision becomes a poker game in which the currency is delay and obstruction.
A government just can't be run like this in the long term. In coalitions all over the world, decisions have to be taken quickly and compromises have to be reached every day of the week. Here, planning and economic issues are either pushed to one side or held back as bargaining chips to be produced at the right psychological moment.
Nobody expects the scaffolding to be totally dismantled before the next Assembly election. That is not scheduled until 2011, but the DUP will put this issue on the agenda in the current round of discussions. They and Sinn Fein will also seek financial guarantees from the British government to underpin the transfer of powers.
Alliance’s price for taking the new ministry will also involve the planned decommissioning of the scaffolding.
There are differences between the unionist parties, the SDLP and Alliance. For instance, the SDLP wants a Bill of Rights to provide a legal appeal mechanism to protect against abuses of power. They may also argue for a slower and more careful transition than the DUP would like.
There will be a complicated trade-off, but if it is to work, any deal will have to be made over the next few weeks. Everyone bar Sinn Fein seem to agree that, while the actual changes won’t happen overnight, we should use this moment to start charting a way forward.
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Thursday 24 May 2012
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