Political potential must be grasped
**Via Newshound
Daily Ireland Editorial
2006 beckons with unlimited promise of political progress — but not first without an ill-advised intervention by Fianna Fáil Minister John O’ Donoghue who wishes to put more blocks in the way of Sinn Féin’s entry into the mainstream.
No wonder Fr Alex Reid warned before the summer that the greatest threat to the peace process came not from the IRA but from Southern politicians.
Diversity of opinion in any political party is a wonderful thing but it will be up to Bertie Ahern to get his troops in line for the political horse-trading which lies ahead. That means teaching them to distinguish between a tactical position — Fianna Fáil can never go into government with Sinn Féin — and the reality: Fianna Fáil will go into government with Sinn Féin if the numbers add up.
Fianna Fáil ministers who wish to gild Bertie Ahern’s lily by declaring their undying enmity towards Sinn Féin should think twice before trying to raise the bar of political participation ever-higher.
The politics of exclusion on this island have resulted only in anguish and misery.
Yesterday, Bertie Ahern refused to rise to the bait of John O’Donoghue when he spelt out his priority for 2006: restoring the powersharing and all-Ireland institutions “sooner rather than later”.
Unfortunately, in the International Monitoring Commission, set up outside the terms of the Good Friday Agreement, the Taoiseach has given a hostage to fortune. Some suggest that the Commissioners are so firmly in the pockets of their paymasters that they will return the report the two governments want: a declaration that the IRA is, in business terms, a dormant company involved in no activities.
However, given that their trusty sources for information to date have been intelligence agencies, policemen and other assorted defectives, there can be no guarantee that they will come in on cue. In his end-of-year comments, the Taoiseach also made it clear that he placed a greater emphasis on securing stability in the North than in securing a United Ireland. All par for the course except that while the Republic has benefited enormously from the peace process — the economic boom and the silence of the guns are not unrelated — nationalists in the North remain in a fetid, sectarian backwater. The union flag alone flies from public buildings, Irish is, in official terms, a non-language, republican ex-prisoners continue to suffer petty humiliations. In short, there are those who wish to ensure the nationalist nightmare continues. Of course, self-confident nationalists are making strides forward but, as evidenced by the state papers from 1975 released yesterday, the Irish Government often appears more worried about the possibility of a United Ireland than the British. The danger is that sterile political negotiations at Stormont in 2006 will disempower the grassroots who are crying out for change.
