EUROPE:EUROPEAN ELECTION candidate Alban Maginness accused the leading unionist and nationalist parties of a "political carve-up", with Sinn Féin bending the knee to the dominant DUP.
“Is this the best that devolution can deliver?” he asked.
“What happened to the bright new promise of May 2007? Sweetness and light was replaced by fall-outs and fractures, boycotts and belligerence, walk-outs and walk-overs.”
The SDLP would continue to be what he called the champion of partnership government, he said.
“We are not prepared to stand by and watch the inclusive process abused in favour of a power carve-up by the two larger parties.”
His party was in politics not to rule, but to serve. Mr Maginness said he lamented “the five wasted months of last year [and] the last five wasted years of inept political representation in Europe”.
The SDLP was the only pro-EU party in Northern Ireland and he commended the party’s long-standing links with the Party of European Socialists.
Referring to sitting MEPs Jim Allister (elected as a DUP candidate but now of the Traditional Unionist Voice) and Sinn Féin’s Bairbre de Brún, he said the SDLP had a real battle on its hands against familiar foes.
“There is Jim Allister,” he said, “a political Rip Van Winkle whose thoughts have been frozen in the 1980s or maybe the 1690s. A malevolent voice intent to destroy power-sharing and our membership of the EU.”
“Bairbre de Brún,” he added “has gone from minister of hospital closures to an MEP with no public exposure.”
He said she had managed to remain silent over the past five years in at least two languages.
He committed his party to engaging with those from other traditions, both religious and political. The challenge of the coming election was to turn “stay-at-home supporters into active SDLP voters”.
Outlining the challenges that face Ireland, he called on the party to “reclaim the rich legacy of John Hume, which has been squandered by his inadequate successors”. The election was not a sectarian headcount, nor was it a simple race, as the DUP insisted, to try to top the poll.