For a brief period of almost two months now, the people of Northern Ireland have known the privilege of living within a full participative democracy. For most of the western world this is commonplace. But in Northern Ireland it is a novelty. Fifty years of unionist domination were followed by almost three decades of Westminster rule. Whole communities, meanwhile, came under the control of paramilitaries who substituted the gun and club for the vestiges of democracy imposed in 1921. It was to end these conditions and to create a new polity based on consent and compromise, that the people of Ireland voted in support of the Belfast Agreement in May 1998.
Regrettably, abhorrently, it now appears that what has been secured at such price is in jeopardy. The decommissioning of paramilitary weapons, an indispensable element of the Agreement, still appears to be as remote a prospect as ever. And without a satisfactory resolution to the issue, the Ulster Unionists, at their council meeting on February 12th, are likely to decide to withdraw from the Executive. At best, in such circumstances, the Executive (and possibly the Assembly) will be suspended and the Agreement will go into "review mode".
Republicans say that what is important is that the guns have been silent for four years. The Sinn Fein leadership is entitled to enormous credit for that. Were matters otherwise there would be no Agreement, no democracy, no executive. But no reasonable observer will condemn Mr David Trimble or his party for doing what they undertook to do if the republicans should fail to deliver their side of the understanding on weapons. In peril of political extinction, Mr Trimble brought his party the extra mile, going into government with the IRA's political representatives and allowing a reasonable period of time within which they could show their bona fides.
Mr Gerry Adams acknowledges that decommissioning is "essential" but says that the unionists must be patient. It must be assumed that the leadership of Sinn Fein would deliver IRA decommissioning if it could. But its spokesmen insist they do not have it in their power to do so and that the Agreement merely requires them to use their influence to achieve it. They say that they have done this and that the IRA will split if the issue is forced. A new thread in these arguments is that republicans have yet to see that politics is working properly and will not relinquish their weapons until this is clear.
The series of significant advances for republicans has been extended within the past fortnight by the British Government's decision to accept virtually in toto the Patten Commission's report on policing. The prisons have been emptied. Sinn Fein's Ministers sit on the executive. All-Ireland political institutions are up and running. The time is long overdue for the IRA and Sinn Fein to show that they intend fully to honour the Agreement, that they accept the will of the people, overwhelmingly expressed in May 1998 and that they accept the democratic process in the fullest sense.
Republicans purport to believe that they are being asked to meet a unionist deadline and that they are being asked to signal surrender. This is self-serving. The unionists, insisting that the republican movement must choose between "the army" and the "party" merely represent the position of every committed democrat. It may be that the dominant elements in the republican movement fail to understand that they cannot retain the fascist stance of running political and the paramilitary options side by side. If so, Sinn Fein's signing up to the Agreement is a sham. Such a settlement is hardly worth having. It would be better that it be set aside than that both parts of Ireland be sucked into a dangerous illusion of democracy.
Gen de Chastelain's report on Monday may indicate progress which falls short of actual decommissioning. And it is true that the only fixed deadline is in May. There will be pressure on Mr Trimble to seek to bring the unionist council with him and to remain in the executive at least until then. But it is impossible to see how the realpolitik of his situation might enable him to do so. Republican intransigence may be about to bring Northern Ireland's brief, new democracy to an end. If that happens, let there be no doubt where the blame and responsibility lie.