DUP members out in force for poll support
THE DUP wheeled out some of its big hitters yesterday to launch the party's Banbridge District Council by-election candidate – signalling it is taking the poll threat from the Traditional Unionist Voice seriously.
MPs Jeffrey Donaldson and David Simpson and Culture Minister Edwin Poots joined around a dozen local party members to see Paul Stewart file his nomination papers for the Dromore ward vote on February 13.
In contrast, the TUV's candidate Keith Harbinson was one of a group of three lodging his papers.
But TUV MEP Jim Allister said that while "some may see this as a David and Goliath" contest, much more was at stake.
This was the opportunity for unionists in this area to register their opinion on the two main unionist parties sharing power with Sinn Fein.
While Ulster Unionist Carol Black will attempt to retain the seat vacated by party colleague Tyrone Howe and Alliance has put forward David Griffin for the contest, the focus is clearly on the DUP-TUV battle.
In this light, the DUP and TUV traded blows yesterday.
The DUP accused TUV figurehead Jim Allister of doing a U-turn on policies he had signed up to under the DUP and ducking out of giving straight answers to public questions they were putting.
Mr Allister, meanwhile, said it was the DUP that had broken pledges and this is what the poll would be about, as he challenged DUP leader Ian Paisley to a public by-election debate in Dromore.
The party's two candidates appeared but minor players as the bigger guns went at it.
Strangford DUP MLA Simon Hamilton said: "I note that in recent days maverick MEP Jim Allister – whenever challenged about his vision, or rather lack of vision for Northern Ireland – has been keen to issue dismissive answers.
"Yet, in each of these answers, he refuses to address the straightforward question I put to him on September 29 and again on December 4 – to account for the clear inconsistency between his current position of opposition to mandatory coalition and his 2004 manifesto support for the governance of Northern Ireland under such an arrangement.
"Why, if he now opposes mandatory coalition so stridently, did he run for election on a manifesto that supported the idea?
"If mandatory coalition is, as he says, 'an absurd way' to run a country, why did he endorse such an absurdity in both Devolution Now and in his own manifesto?"
Mr Allister has "a real nerve in accusing anyone else of broken pledges", he added.
The MEP responded that he had stuck to policy while the DUP had not and this is why he left the party.
"During this election we will put the focus back on issues which others would rather forget, like the fact that Sinn Fein still has a military wing and that the Army Council still exists," he said.
"Also, that Sinn Fein in government is working its all-Ireland agenda, even to the point of seeking to harmonise our education selection system to that prevailing in the Republic.
"We will call to account the broken promises of last March and if the First Minister would like to come to Dromore to a public debate with me on these issues I'll be there. Will he?"
He also asked if the DUP believed its own jibes that he was "irrelevant" and on "borrowed time", why "the scriptwriters in DUP headquarters" were spending so much time abusing him.
And he argued that he had an alternative vision, where if the Province must have devolution it "should have it in accordance with the forms and precedents prevailing elsewhere in the UK which preserve democratic primacy and gives voters the right to vote a party out of office".
This, he said, was opposed to the "mangled form of devolution, mandatory coalition, which the DUP has permitted is such that Sinn Fein – who don't even accept the entity of Northern Ireland – are guaranteed a place in its government in perpetuity".
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Monday 28 May 2012
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