SDLP move to hand unionists veto over nationalist ministers 'disgraceful'

McDevitt: 'Ill-thought out move'

AN SDLP call for changing rules to allow the Assembly to sack a minister would mean handing unionists a veto over nationalist ministers, Sinn Féin MLA Alex Maskey has said.

The Belfast MLA said:

SDLP representative Conal McDevitt needs to get real if he thinks that nationalists in the North are about to stand by and watch him try and barter away hard-fought gains in successive negotiations for his own narrow political ambitions.

Alex accused the SDLP representative of disgracefully aligning himself with unionist attempts to undermine the checks and balances at the Assembly, once a bastion of unionist domination and sectarian discrimination. He said:

Conal McDevitt may not understand nor care about the past unionist abuse of power in the Six Counties.

In pursuit of his own political ambitions, he seeks to build a Ulster Unionist/SDLP alliance. His agenda is causing unease amongst many within the SDLP base.

He is actively attempting to undermine the checks and balances contained within the Good Friday Agreement political institutions.

The Sinn Féin MLA said that McDevitt’s call for a new mechanism to allow the removal of an Executive minister on the basis of a simple majority vote is “ill thought-out”.

This is a long-standing unionist demand. For an SDLP representative to propose what would in effect be a unionist veto over the operation of the political institutions is staggering.

Were it to be adopted his proposal would spell the end of power-sharing government.

The only way that the political institutions can operate effectively and in the interests of all is on the basis of equality, Alex Maskey insisted.

Sinn Féin will not allow any attempts to undermine the power-sharing safeguards and guarantees built into the arrangements upon which the institutions are required to operate.

That is the only way to ensure that the unionist abuses of the past never happen again and that the institutions serve all sections of society.