Sinn Fein has demanded that the Democratic Unionist Party's two ministers be stripped of some of their ministerial responsibilities when the DUP starts to rotate the two portfolios among party members on Thursday.
Mr Peter Robinson (Regional Development) and Mr Nigel Dodds (Social Development) will officially resign on Thursday after the Assembly failed to support a DUP motion calling for the expulsion of Sinn Fein from the Executive several weeks ago.
Their posts will be passed to other DUP MLAs, believed to be initially Mr Gregory Campbell and Mr Maurice Morrow, on a rotating basis.
Sinn Fein chairman Mr Mitchel McLauglin said such "antics" should not be tolerated by the pro-agreement parties. Describing Mr Campbell and Mr Morrow as "second-rate, second-class and second-choice", he said the tactic compounded the disruption caused by the DUP's decision not to allow its nominees to attend Executive meetings.
"Those parties that actually designed those portfolios have the numbers and the votes in the Assembly to take away some of the functions from the departments. We could have a situation in a very short time when all they [the DUP] have is their musical chairs to play with," Mr McLaughlin told BBC Radio Ulster.
Mr Dodds said he was "very gratified" that people should think he and Mr Robinson had done such a good job but that it was "simply nonsense" to believe that others in his party were not just as capable. He said his party's strategy would ensure that the two departments' work would not suffer and he and Mr Robinson would now focus their attention on unseating the UUP leader, Mr David Trimble, at the next Westminster election.
Meanwhile, Mr McLaughlin told a rally in Co Tipperary that unionists were using the name and symbols of the RUC as a way of maintaining control over policing. At a commemoration for IRA man Liam Lynch, in Knockmealdown, he called on unionists to "stop posturing" over symbols.
The approach adopted to the Policing Bill by unionists, the Conservatives and the Police Federation suggested they wanted the police to remain a unionist force.
Nationalists and republicans, he claimed, would not be attracted to a police service which retained "those very things that contributed to making the RUC unacceptable".