Boo! Hiss! Phooey!

Politics at fault as peace process hits dust bin again
By Diarmaid Mac Dermott
Ireland International News Agency

Readers of this column will have lost count how many times I have written that the Northern Ireland peace process is in crisis and that the carefully assembled Good Friday Agreement reached in 1998 is in danger of collapsing. The conclusion must be that the two communities in the North — Roman Catholic and Protestant, nationalist and unionist — are incapable of living together or indeed of reaching political arrangements that allow them to share a small piece of real estate on Europe's westernmost island.

But yet again, the politicians there are squabbling at each others' throats and the institutions so carefully put together with the help of former President Bill Clinton and the British and Irish governments are in danger of collapsing. The trigger this time was the resignation on July 1 of Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble as First Minister of the Northern Ireland Assembly, the local law-making body representing both communities. Trimble signaled that he would resign, thereby plunging the Good Friday Agreement into crisis, unless the IRA began to decommission its terrorist arsenal by the end of June this year.

A similar crisis last year was averted when the IRA leadership said it would "put its weapons beyond use" by June 2001, if the terms of the Good Friday Agreement were implemented. However, there is no sign of the IRA ever handing over or destroying its weapons. The farthest the organization has gone is to allow the International Decommissioning Body to examine some of its secret arms dumps and they have verified that the weapons stored there have not been tampered with since their first examination. It is now generally accepted that the most the IRA will ever allow is a gesture — perhaps the concreting over of three of its arms dumps — and that this will be done on the terrorist organization's own terms . The IRA has consistently said that they will not give in to demands from the unionists or the British Government to decommission its weapons.

Last-minute talks convened in Britain by the British and Irish governments in a bid to rescue the peace process ended without an agreement on the way forward. The two governments said they will put forward their own proposals and await a response from the Northern Ireland parties. The speculation is that either the institutions set up under the Good Friday Agreement will be suspended or that new elections for the local Assembly will be called for the autumn.

However, the danger is that new elections will simply result in the return of a large number of candidates who are fundamentally opposed to the whole thinking behind the Good Friday Agreement. Ian Paisley's extremist Democratic Unionist Party made significant gains at the British general election in June as did members of Trimble's Ulster Unionist Party who are against the agreement. It seems likely that Trimble will resign as leader of his party before the end of the year and that his replacement will be firmly anti-agreement. On the nationalist side, Sinn Féin is now the largest party representing Northern Ireland's Catholics, having overtaken the moderate SDLP in the election. 

The signs are that attitudes on both sides have hardened and that the chances of both sides working together for a peaceful outcome are slim. Against the political background, violence has returned to the streets of Northern Ireland, as it does every summer, with inter-community rioting and attacks on the demoralized police force, the RUC. 

So who is to blame? Perhaps the fault lies with the whole concept of the Good Friday Agreement. That was negotiated on the basis that there would be no "zero sum game"' — in other words that one side would not lose if the other side won. The agreement was a classic example of carefully selected checks and balances designed to satisfy all sides by ensuring that no one appeared to benefit at the expense of anyone else. 

The reality was that the agreement delivered a large part of Sinn Féin and the IRA's agenda. All terrorist prisoners, both IRA and loyalist, have now been freed, the RUC is about to disappear to be replaced by a community-based police service, Sinn Féin has two ministers in the North's government and the presence of the British army on the streets of Northern Ireland has been greatly reduced. On the loyalist side, there has been no sign of any trust developing with the North's Catholic community. 

Sectarian tensions are stoked up continually by the so-called political leaders of the Protestant community and there has been no attempt to understand the mindset of people whose territory they share. 

The political leaders of both communities have failed their constituencies. They have failed to show any sense of leadership or statesmanship, any sense of having a new vision to replace the outdated sectarian slogans that have been around for 300 years. Both sets of leaders want to win on their own terms and are not prepared to tone down their views to allow accommodation of both equally justifiable viewpoints. All the politicians in Northern Ireland have acted without any maturity, sacrificing long-term accommodation for short-term political gain. 

Without the influence of leaders like Clinton, Ahern and Blair, the North's politicians have behaved like spoilt children who stamp their feet when they are not given what they want. The tragedy of Northern Ireland is that after 30 years of a terrorist war and inter-communal bloodletting, Protestants and Catholics seem determined to prolong and maintain their ancient hatreds. 

A new generation is growing up with the same hatreds and same attitudes as their forefathers and that means that antagonisms spill over into episodes of violence. The communities on the ground see no inspiration from their political leaders. They see petty bickering and small mindedness and selfish game playing. The winners are the faceless men of the IRA and of the loyalist terror gangs who have caused so much mayhem and destruction over 30 years. They continue to gloat as the politicians conform to their agenda and they sit back with a grin on their faces as those who should be providing leadership fail dismally to do so. 

Who knows how many more times I will be writing "the Northern Ireland peace process faces a new crisis"?