Overview:The question of powersharing was expertly rebuffed in east Belfast, writes Gerry Moriarty, Northern Editor.
Yesterday was the DUP's big campaign day, its manifesto launch, and a pretty slick, expensive 64-page colour production it was too.
This was the manifesto that the Yes DUP-ers and the party's Twelve Apostles - who have suspicions about a deal with Sinn Féin - had to unite around. So, the manifesto, like St Paul, as Ian Paisley might tell you, had to be all things to all men.
And women too, of course, although St Paul just refers to men in his epistle, as the DUP leader would also readily tell you. Virtually all of the party's 46 Assembly election candidates, six of them women, turned up spruced and enthusiastic in the Titanic Quarter of east Belfast to hear Dr Paisley, his deputy Peter Robinson and St Andrews sceptic and apostle Nigel Dodds launch the document.
As "Free Stater" Miriam Lord perceptively noted here yesterday, DUP candidates have a penchant for pinstripes. Even lead Strangford candidate Iris Robinson was in pinstripes at the launch. A fiery politician at the best of times, she was in blazing form when speaking to The Irish Times yesterday.
Four seats in Strangford is her goal, an extra seat for the DUP, which is a huge ask, which could put her male colleagues to shame, including her husband Peter in East Belfast, but such was her deadly purpose you wouldn't easily bet against her.
That distilled, charged ambition was pumping around the Northern Ireland Science Centre like adrenalin yesterday. How many seats would the DUP win, Iris and some of the candidates and backroom boffins were asked. "Thirty-five, maybe 36," some of them said. "Who knows! Thirty-seven, eight, nine," others said, if the party could just manage its vote better.
If DUP politicians fear the opposition from anti-deal "maverick" unionists, as they label them, from Robert McCartney's UKUP and other unionist quarters, there was no sense of it yesterday.
Dr Paisley was even worried he might succumb to the deadly sin of pride, such was the adulation heaped upon him during his canvasses, he told us. Not once, added Mr Robinson separately to The Irish Times, did the constitutional question or issues about powersharing arise on the doorstep during his canvasses.
So, if it isn't an issue - to revert to a critical theme of this election - was now the time for the DUP to make more explicit if it would enter into government with Sinn Féin on March 26th? No, it wasn't the time, according to the DUP, and according to the manifesto. Again like St Paul, the party continues to play the issue to suit and settle its audience. Don't ask me, was the recurrent line from Dr Paisley, ask Sinn Féin if powersharing could happen by the deadline.
In any case, how could the party be definitive when Sinn Féin itself wasn't definitive on whether it supported the PSNI, added Dr Paisley, and Messrs Robinson and Dodds, all united, cited how Sinn Féin MP Michelle Gildernew and some other SF politicians appeared to be making a distinction between "civic and political" policing.
This absence of clarity prompted the Ulster Unionist leader Sir Reg Empey to complain of a "gutless DUP manifesto" because it doesn't tell unionists whether a deal is on.
Over at his party's campaign launch in Belfast Castle, Gerry Adams was more philosophical about it all. He refused to be drawn on the row over Ms Gildernew's comment that she wouldn't make a report to the police if she saw a gang of armed dissident republicans intent on some nefarious activity. "It's a hypothetical question," he said.
As for the DUP's uncertainty about powersharing and its continuing criticisms of Sinn Féin, said Mr Adams, "I forgive them. It's the first day of Lent."