Paisley and the DUP (Democratic Unionist Party)
The Root of the Problems in Northern Ireland stem from Ian Paisley
Ian Paisley is well known and openly professed Catholic Basher and religious Bigot. NI. Paisley as misdirected as he is does not hide his opinions which are more than can be said for many Federal Judges in the USA who use the law of the land to promote their individual politics and religious beliefs over the majority.
The USA fought the British Government in order to be country that accepts people from all Faiths and Religions and backgrounds asking only they respect the rights of each other. Many Irish descendants of the Irish Holocaust found freedom in the USA.
Sadly the British Government continues to support Paisley and the DUP one of the largest political parties in NI as it ignores the will and vote of the majority of good people in implementing the Good Friday Agreement (GFA).
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The Good Friday Agreement (GFA) was signed a little over five years ago. Since it was signed by the Irish and British governments, as well as a number of political parties, it has the status of an International Treaty. Despite this status, many of the provisions of the agreement remain unimplemented to this very day. In fact, in October of 2002, Prime Minister Tony Blair freely and publicly admitted that his government had failed to implement many of obligations to which it had agreed when it signed the agreement. Such a failure would be unacceptable in an ordinary agreement between individuals. It is intolerable when it involves the promises of sovereign governments. Intense negotiations have been underway during the past few months between the two governments and the so-called pro-agreement political parties. The purpose of these negotiations was to see if agreement could be reached that would enable the governments to proceed with the full implementation of the GFA and the restoration of the devolved government at Stormont, injudiciously suspended by the British government some months earlier. One might ask why you need negotiations now to allow a government to fulfill promises solemnly agreed to five years earlier. That would ignore the fact that England has still not come totally to understand that the days of colonization are long gone. As the fifth anniversary of the GFA approached, it appeared that the governments were prepared to move forward with further implementation of the agreement. While the document outlining their proposed plan has yet to be made public, many of the proposals were leaked to the media. Apparently there was to be movement on the issues of demilitarization, policing, criminal justice, the stability of institutions of government, human rights and equality. It should be pointed out at this juncture that some of these items, particularly human rights, equality and a policing service that equally serves the entire community and not just one segment of it, are basic human rights that all people are entitled to even if there was no such thing as the Good Friday Agreement. As this is written, England is engaged in a war in Iraq to deliver these rights to the Iraqis but seems to be unable to deliver these same rights to the nationalist people of Northern Ireland. However, as in the words of the famous play, Something Happened On The Way To The Forum, the governments pulled back just before they were to introduce their plan for further implementation. The media spin on this development has been to place the blame entirely on the IRA. As part of the overall package, the IRA was to deliver a statement as to their future intentions. There has been no demand for similar statements from loyalist paramilitary groups who continue their attacks on Catholics in the six counties. If you believe the media spin, the statement that the IRA delivered to the two governments was deemed insufficient. We should ask insufficient to whom. In a briefing to journalists on the statement, the British government noted that it does not " doubt the intentions of either Sinn Fein or the IRA". Northern Ireland Secretary Paul Murphy, a British official, said that the IRA statement shows a "clear desire to make the peace process work", and an unnamed Irish government source stated that the IRA statement was, " only inches away from providing the necessary wording". This is not exactly the diplomatic language for insufficiency. If the governments do not have a substantial problem with the statement, then who has this problem with insufficiency? The answer would seem to be clear- the statement is insufficient to the needs of David Trimble and his UUP party who need an IRA surrender to avoid defeat in the upcoming elections scheduled for May 29, 2003. Once again substantial progress in the peace process is thwarted by the electoral needs of Trimble and his colleagues. While Trimble and the UUP are generally classified as pro-agreement, they have done as much to impede progress as Ian Paisley's DUP. Both nationalist parties, Sinn Fein and the SDLP, as well as many Irish American groups have called on the two governments to make public their proposals so the people of Ireland can make their own judgment on the proposals and the sufficiency of the IRA statement. This is particularly critical with an election scheduled in Northern Ireland for May 29th. It would be most helpful if voters knew what they were voting on when they went to the polls rather than voting in a vacuum. However, this seems unlikely, as the implementation proposals would be viewed by unionists, as concessions to nationalists and this would have a negative effect on the election prospects of Trimble and the UUP. Unionists have a difficult time realizing that when you have had A Unionist State For A Unionist People for over 80 years, steps to level the playing field are not concessions but steps to reverse blatant discrimination that never should have existed in the first place. Also the British government does not have a history of operating in the open when dealing with the Irish people. The Nationalist population of Northern Ireland has always known that the British government actively participated in the murder of nationalists. However, it took Sir John Stevens, a leading English police official, fourteen years to investigate and come to the same conclusion in the 1989 brutal murder of human rights attorney Pat Finucane.
The above article by: Gerald P. Lally, Esq. - Political
Action Chair
IRISH AMERICAN UNITY CONFERENCE
National Press Building
529 14th St. NW Suite 837
Washington, DC 20045
1-800-947-4282
Email: mailto:iauc@iauc.org
http://www.iauc.org/
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More Information:
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... arenas. Last week we were witness to one of the last
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... But with Ian Paisley's DUP and Gerry Adams'
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... On Prime Time on Tuesday, Ian Paisley was
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THE BLANKET
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... The prospect of Ian Paisley, whose Democratic
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... Yet the stone wall attitude of Paisley senior,
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Index: Current Articles
... The key question is whether Ian Paisley the
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