Ulster Unionist Party leader Tom Elliott has called for an end to the statutory obligation for coalition government in Northern Ireland, and for there to be an official opposition.
Ulster Unionist Party leader Tom Elliott has called for an end to the statutory obligation for coalition government in Northern Ireland, and for there to be an official opposition. Under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement, membership of the Northern Ireland Executive is based not on negotiations following elections to the Assembly, but is guaranteed to those parties who achieve the required number of seats and proportion of votes under the complex d’Hondt system.
The idea is that mandatory coalitions lock the parties together, addressing the sectarian divide that has long afflicted Northern Ireland. However, the UUP now believes reforms are needed to enable the formation of both a Government and Opposition as happens elsewhere in the United Kingdom.
Speaking to business leader on Wednesday, the UUP leader said:
“…as I seek to cut our over-governance in numbers and inputs, and address our under-governance in outputs and outcomes, it is time to set our sights on a review of the devolved government that paves the way for the next elections, in 2015, to be about electing a Government and an Opposition.
“So, the Ulster Unionists are NOT preparing our members for Opposition in 2011. We are paving the way for better government at Stormont.
“They say the trouble with the original Stormont Government is that you could call as many elections as you wanted, but you would never see a change of government, because of one-party dominance. The problem with this iteration of the Stormont Government is that you can call as many elections as you want, but you will never see a change of government, because of the mandatory coalition.
“We have four years to prepare the ground for a change from a mandatory all-party coalition to a system of Government and Opposition – the system that works around the world.”
The responses from Northern Ireland’s other political parties have divided down sectarian lines.
For the Democratic Unionist Party, enterprise minister Arlene Foster said:
“We welcome the UUP’s conversion and decision to adopt our policy, even though they’re 13 years late.”
For the hard-line Traditional Unionist Voice, meanwhile, leader Jim Allister called for an immediate end to the system of mandatory coalitions now, rather than waiting until 2015.
Republicans have sought to portray unionists and each other as the bad guys when it comes to the effective, or otherwise, operation of government in Northern Ireland. For the SDLP, Margaret Ritchie argued that it was the DUP and Sinn Fein to blame for governance failures, saying that they:
“…only work together in their own interest and are failing the people.”
And for Sinn Fein, regional development minister Conor Murphy accused the UUP of already being “semi-detached” members of the Stormont Executive, unprepared to do the heavy lifting involved in governing.
With elections to the Assembly now only a matter of weeks away, Mr Elliott’s comments will been seen as firing the starting gun for an ongoing debate over the fundamental question of how Northern Ireland should be governed and run.
In a useful analysis of the situation, an Editorial in the Belfast Telegraph ran:
“Everyone recognises that Northern Ireland’s mandatory coalition system of government was established for very valid reasons – that there would be no return to the old system of one party, or one tradition, dominating of government.
“It was necessary to build confidence in a devolved administration and to ensure that all shades of opinion had a say in the way the province was governed.
“Yet mandatory coalition is increasingly undermining confidence in local politics. Yes, all the main parties have at least one hand on the levers of power, but there is no collective consensus on any of the policies.
“Every minister is effectively a law unto himself or herself and cannot be removed from office except by his own party. It is a system of government like no other in the democratic west.”
To reach hundreds of thousands of new readers and to make the biggest impact we can in the next general election, we need to grow our donor base substantially.
That's why in 2024, we are seeking to generate 150 additional regular donors to support Left Foot Forward's work.
We still need another 124 people to donate to hit the target. You can help. Donate today.
8 Responses to “UUP leader calls for end to mandatory coalitions at Stormont”
jbw
RT @leftfootfwd: UUP leader calls for end to mandatory coalitions at Stormont: http://bit.ly/fbqcEm reports @EdJacobs1985
Ed Jacobs
RT @leftfootfwd: UUP leader calls for end to mandatory coalitions at Stormont http://bit.ly/eDmvOy
edjacobs1985
RT @leftfootfwd: UUP leader calls for end to mandatory coalitions at Stormont http://bit.ly/eDmvOy
Robin Wilson
This is an interesting opening up of a debate which could, in the long run, lead to a realignment of Northern Ireland politics along left-right lines. Platform for Change (of which I am chair) commented (in a letter to the Belfast Telegraph:
It is a fundamental principle of democracy that a parliament or assembly can properly hold the executive to account. A cornerstone of this is the idea that an effective opposition exists, to challenge bad government.
One of the unintended effects of the Belfast agreement was that there is no such opposition in the Northern Ireland Assembly. This was a quirk of negotiations during just one night before Good Friday 1998.
The Ulster Unionist Party had proposed an assembly with committee chairs allocated by the d’Hondt rule—so no sharing of power with Catholic politicians in government. The SDLP insisted on executive power-sharing and a Catholic veto. The compromise was an executive of ministers distributed by d’Hondt, each presiding over an independent department.
It was the horse designed by a committee which became a camel. All major parties were thrown together in government, but with no collective responsibility or sense of mutuality across the sectarian divide, and no one was left to provide a significant opposition in the assembly. This is even more true today with the acceptance by Alliance of the devolved justice ministry.
The timely comments by the current Ulster Unionist leader on the need for an opposition show that this debate is reopening. Platform for Change, which has been established to promote a political realignment away from sectarian polarisation and a renewal of the civic engagement evident at the time of the agreement, would urge other parties to follow suit.
One of the limitations of the power-sharing debate in Northern Ireland has been the assumption that power-sharing means there can not be significant changes of government through elections, with the same parties always being returned to power. Yet this defies the even more fundamental democratic principle of the voters’ right to ‘turf the scoundrels out’—and not see the same ‘scoundrels’ come back next time.
The best guarantee of that right is the other side of the opposition coin: power-sharing should not be voluntary but the mandate should be that an egalitarian, cross-sectarian coalition is formed after an assembly election by agreement—not by the lottery of d’Hondt. And the focus should be an agreed Programme for Government. This is key to ensuring we have a programme that is relevant and a government that works.
Mr. Sensible
This is interesting.
I think people like Mr Elliot have a point, but we should also remember the situation as was before the Good Friday agreement was drawn up.
I don’t think any of us want a return to those days.