In the June 1998 elections to the Assembly that has now been suspended, Sinn Fein got 143,000 votes and its highest-ever share of the poll at 17.7 per cent. In all the many interchangeable interviews given by its spokesmen and spokeswomen in recent weeks, the party has stressed, again and again, that this vote gives it the right to be in government, regardless of what the IRA does or does not do. Its mandate is as democratic as everyone else's. Such a level of democratic endorsement makes the party crucial to the political process.
Superficially, this seems a strong argument. But it ignores an awkward reality. In the same election, the Democratic Unionists drew slightly more support than Sinn Fein: 146,000 votes. Like Sinn Fein, the DUP was entitled to two seats on the Executive, and in the event it decided to take them.
But no one ever suggested that the peace process would be meaningless without the DUP's participation. To adapt Fergus Finlay's famous phrase, no one has said that without the DUP the peace game would not be worth a penny candle.
All those in favour of the process would, of course, have liked the DUP on board from the start. No one denied the right of Ian Paisley to represent his electorate or to take part in a system of institutions that was designed to be as inclusive as possible. But nor did anyone suggest that the whole delicate architecture of the Belfast Agreement rested on the keystone of Dr Paisley's participation. The architects of the process concluded, ruefully but firmly, that the future of Northern Ireland could not be confined by the narrow vision of a party with just 18 per cent of the vote.
What lies behind this vast difference between the attention lavished on Sinn Fein and the relative neglect of a party with a similar democratic mandate? The answer, as everyone knows, is brutally simple. Sinn Fein is umbilically linked to a private army. The DUP, for all Dr Paisley's posturing and all his wider responsibility for the climate of violence, isn't. The bleak lesson is that if, instead of marching men with firearms certificates up and down hills, Ian Paisley had formed his own private terror gang, the DUP would have been perceived as an indispensable player in the peace process.
But there may also be another lesson. If the game was worth the candle without the DUP, why should it not be worthwhile without Sinn Fein? Is it now possible, in other words, for the Irish and British governments to adopt the same attitude to Sinn Fein as they have taken towards the DUP throughout the process? Can they say to Sinn Fein: "We respect your democratic mandate, we want you in, we will do everything possible to keep your places warm for you, but in the meantime, we're going ahead with the process. Let us know when the IRA is ready to meet its obligations, but don't ask us to wait around in the meantime."?
This kind of approach would involve an attempt to put all of the institutions created under the Belfast Agreement back on track, drawing their mandate from the support of the SDLP, UUP, Alliance, PUP, and Women's Coalition members of the Assembly who between them received the support of well over half of those who voted in the Assembly elections. These parties would have to commit themselves to upholding all aspects of the agreement, including the eventual return of Sinn Fein to the Executive if and when the de Chastelain commission reports favourably on the IRA's compliance with the agreement.
This might, in fact, be a good short-term solution even for Sinn Fein itself. The party, after all, has never suggested that having two seats in a devolved Executive is one of its key goals. It says that what it wants is not power but genuine equality for the Catholic and nationalist population.
And there is no reason why the equality agenda set out in the Belfast Agreement cannot be pursued by an administration that does not include Sinn Fein ministers. What matters, surely, is the actual implementation of real reforms.
It would hardly make sense, even within the strange thought-processes of private armies, for the IRA to return to violence in order to wage an armed insurrection against an administration that is carrying out policies to which Sinn Fein has signed up. Relaunching a terror campaign against direct rule from London is imaginable. Declaring war on an administration that is reforming policing, implementing the equality agenda, operating cross-Border bodies and upholding human rights isn't.
Sinn Fein would, admittedly, have to get over the notion that it has some kind of automatic right to serve in government with 18 per cent of the vote and accept for now the role of a democratic opposition. More crucially, the Irish Government, and in particular the SDLP, would have to wave goodbye to the so-called pan-nationalist consensus that was at the heart of the Hume-Adams dialogue that created the peace process. For a strategy that contributed so much to progress has now become a severe obstacle to further advancement.
The pan-nationalist consensus is, in any case, already dead. Seamus Mallon has been saying as much in his public comments over the last fortnight. The key dividing issue in Northern Ireland - decommissioning - is one on which the fault line no longer runs along the well-worn split between nationalists and unionists but right through the heart of the old nationalist alliance. The SDLP and the Irish Government are firmly on one side of the argument, along with most of their old antagonists. Sinn Fein is on the other. The political alignment that created the peace process has run out of road.
So the SDLP, a party that is used to tough choices, faces another one. It can continue to bash its head against the stone wall of the IRA's intransigence; or it can try to construct, with David Trimble and without Sinn Fein, a broadly based cross-community alliance committed to delivering the real substance of the Belfast Agreement.
This latter option would buy time for Sinn Fein and the IRA to solve their decommissioning problems outside the framework of tight political deadlines. Even though it would undoubtedly attract republican cries of "treason" and a return to the abuse of the Stoop Down Low Party, it would be a fine act of standing up for democracy.