The Ulster Unionist Party received a boost this evening after anti-Belfast Agreement unionist DUP candidate Mr Jim Dixon withdrew from the campaign for Fermanagh and South Tyrone.
Mr Dixon's withdrawal means Mr James Cooper is the only unionist candidate left in the constituency. The UUP is defending a 13,688 majority over Sinn Fein.
However, Mr Dixon alleged a campaign to besmirch his character as the reason for his decision, pointing the finger at "fellow unionists".
The statement from the Dixon campaign office in Enniskillen said: "The IRA attempted to destroy my body and nearly succeeded but I never thought I would live to see the day that the fellow Unionists would try to destroy my character."
Neither Mr Dixon nor his campaign team would elaborate any further on the allegations surrounding his dramatic withdrawal from the race to succeed Ulster Unionist, Mr Ken Maginnis as MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone.
However allegations that Ulster Unionists forced the survivor of the 1987 Remembrance Day bomb out of the race were denied by the party's candidate Mr Cooper.
Mr Cooper said: "I would condemn any unionist who for one minute considered such nefarious activity. I have absolutely no knowledge of any attempt to besmirch Jim Dixon's character.
"I have throughout the course of the campaign and the last few weeks been at great pains to stress the admiration that I have and the respect with which the unionist community holds Jim Dixon in his campaign for the victims of violence."
The Rev Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionists stepped aside last week to allow Mr Dixon to have a clear run at the anti-Agreement vote.
DUP sources said the party was tonight engaged in meetings with Mr Dixon's campaign and with party officers in Fermanagh and South Tyrone to decide whether to put its candidate, Stormont Social Development Minister Maurice Morrow back in the race.
Deputy leader and director of elections, Mr Peter Robinson said earlier at Stormont the DUP would be "looking very closely and probing the circumstances of Mr Dixon's withdrawal".
"We are already consulting with people in that camp and with others in the Fermanagh South Tyrone area. I think at this stage, I don't want to be giving any definitive response."
Sinn Fein candidate Michelle Gildernew was hoping to benefit from a fragmented unionist vote in her bid to become the first republican MP for the area since Owen Carron in 1983.
PA