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The
up and coming election should be boycotted by all
republicans on the basis that it is another attempt
to make the unworkable work and normalise the abnormal.
A cursory glance at the history of the agreement and
the Stormont parliament should be enough to convince
even the most optimistic that the assembly has failed.
Any attempt to revive the assembly will ultimately
end in the same failure because the agreement does
not recognise the root cause of all Irelands ills,
the refusal of Britain to respect Irelands right to
self-determination and the sovereignty declared by
the vast majority of its people in the last all Ireland
elections. If Britain cannot accept the fundamental
tenets of democracy, such as majority rule and the
rights of a people to national self-determination
without external interference, can we really be surprised
when they collapse their own undemocratic institutions
when it suits them.
Much
has been made of the fact that the GFA received a
majority yes vote across the island albeit in two
jurisdictions, and despite the fact that two different
questions were being asked in the two jurisdictions
and that one jurisdiction had the power of veto over
the other. Even by the most liberal of reading this
cannot seriously be called democracy, unfortunately
the British, American and the 26 County governments
have managed to convince a majority of people that
this is democracy, as if they would know given their
own track records.
The
main reason for the token gesture on the 26th of November
is to convince people that they somehow have a say
in what happens next in the six counties and that
the constitutional position of the north of Ireland
is still up for grabs. In Sinn Fein’s pre-election
spiel there is the usual spin about cross border institutions
creating a “Dynamic” that will ultimately
lead to a united Ireland neglecting to point out,
as Michael Mc Gimpsey subsequently did that the unionists
have a power of veto of any future cross-border institutions.
The reality of the Agreement is that Unionism is still
the dominant force in politics in the north no-matter
how many nationalist candidates are elected, if unionism
does not like what it sees then it will collapse the
institutions and direct ‘British’ rule will
be restored. For unionism it is a case of “heads
I win, tails you lose”
The
32 County Sovereignty Movement is calling for a total
boycott of next week’s election on the grounds
that participation at any level is adding credence
to the fallacy that democracy exists in Ireland in
any shape or form. The Irish people need to reassert
the fact that they declared a sovereign nation and
that any attempt to interfere with that sovereignty
is not only undemocratic but is illegal in international
law and flouts conventional wisdom. It is time for
republicans to realise that you cannot legitimise
the illegitimate or reform the irreformable. It is
time to build the republican alternative to the failed
politics of the Good Friday Agreement.
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