SAOIRSE32

International Herald Tribune
Associated Press
Wednesday, March 5, 2008

BELFAST, Northern Ireland: An era is ending in Northern Ireland on Tuesday: Ian Paisley, the fiery evangelist who long personified Protestant resistance to Irish nationalism, has announced he will step down as head of the territory’s power-sharing government and leader of his political party.

The 81-year-old Paisley’s career reflected the tumult that tore at Northern Ireland, beginning with the bloodshed of sectarian clashes in the 1960s and arcing through four decades of conflict that finally culminated in reconciliation with Irish Roman Catholics a year ago.

Paisley has faced growing dissent from hard-liners within his Democratic Unionist Party over his dramatic U-turn to work with Catholics. That decision was blamed for the party’s loss in a January by-election, and his leadership was further undermined by his son’s ethical lapses.

Paisley, who made the announcement Tuesday, said weeks of mounting pressure from within his party prompted him to stand aside.

Martin McGuinness, the former Irish Republican Army chieftain who became Paisley’s close colleague in the power-sharing deal reached last March, praised his former enemy for providing “decisive leadership that was instrumental in achieving the peace that we now enjoy.”

Paisley said he will resign in May, after an investment conference in Belfast organized by the power-sharing executive of the British territory.

“I came to this decision a few weeks ago when I was thinking very much about the conference and what was going to come after the conference,” he said. “I thought that it is a marker, a very big marker and it would be a very appropriate time for me to bow out.”

Although he will resign as first minister, he plans to retain his seats in Britain’s Parliament and the Northern Ireland Assembly.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he admired the leadership Paisley had shown as first minister.

“Progress on bringing a lasting peace to Northern Ireland would not have been possible without his immense courage and leadership,” Brown said.

It was a huge change for Paisley, who had been the booming voice of Protestant insistence that Northern Ireland remain a part of Britain.

Paisley’s followers were stunned last March when he abandoned his four-decade-old refusal to work with the IRA-linked Sinn Fein party following that party’s landmark decision to begin working with the Northern Ireland police force.

Paisley, who represents the British Protestant majority, and McGuinness, who represents the Irish Catholic minority, took charge of a 12-member, four-party administration.

“In the final analysis, he made it happen. The man famous for saying no will go down in history for saying yes,” said former Prime Minister Tony Blair, who helped broker the deal.

But history must decide whether Paisley will be mostly remembered for his 40 years of saying no, said David Ford, the leader of Northern Ireland’s neutral Alliance Party.

“Many will say his road to Damascus conversion came 35 years too late,” Ford said.

Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern acknowledged he had spent most of his political career at loggerheads with Paisley, but said it was difficult to see him just as stability had been achieved.

“We have to now work to see if that harmonious relationship can continue,” Ahern said. “Obviously, I hope so but time will decide that.”

Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams echoed that sentiment.

“Whatever people might say, his political career has ended with a good and positive legacy for the people who live on this island,” Adams told Sky News.

“My only concern … is that those within the DUP who are against power-sharing, and there are some, would use any instability in the leadership … to set back the progress we have made thus far,” Adams said.

The leading candidates to replace Paisley as party leader are Peter Robinson, the Democratic Unionist Party deputy leader who is finance minister in the power-sharing administration, and Nigel Dodds, the economy minister.

Paisley would not comment on who might take over from him.

“This is not the Church of Rome,” he told Ulster Television. “This is not Apostolic succession and I have no right to say who will succeed me.”

He said he had no plans to try to influence his successor from behind the scenes. “When I make a break, it is a break,” he said.

Paisley previously had insisted he would serve his full term as power-sharing leader through 2011, but the growing disquiet from hard-liners within his party proved too much.

Although he founded the party in 1971, to oppose compromise with Catholics, his hold was shaken in January when it lost a by-election to fill a vacant Northern Ireland Assembly seat — in part because some Protestant voters turned to a fringe party opposed to sharing power.

Paisley jumped before he was pushed, said European Parliament member Jim Allister, who quit the DUP last year over its power-sharing deal with Sinn Fein.

“Ian Paisley was hung out to dry by the so-called pragmatists in the DUP because, frankly, he’d served his purpose in that he delivered what no other DUP leader could deliver — a DUP/Sinn Fein coalition,” Allister said.

Paisley’s standing also suffered when his son, Ian Paisley Jr., was forced to resign as his government assistant last month amid questions about his ties to a real estate developer. Documents showed the younger Paisley had bought a home from the developer and had lobbied the British government repeatedly to support various business ventures.

Grass-roots disillusionment with Paisley’s new political stance already had forced him to quit in January as head of the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster, the anti-Catholic denomination he founded in 1951