A chara, - Your Editorial (October 12th) gives the impression that Sinn Fein is somehow responsible for the present deadlock in the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement. By implication it then attempts to shift the responsibility for resolving David Trimble's difficulties on to our party.
What must be made crystal clear to all is that David Trimble's difficulties are of his own making.
Mr Trimble is carefully manipulating the actions of the rejectionists within his own party to portray a picture of a leader under pressure. He is as aware as anyone else that grass-roots political opinion across the board is in favour of the changes contained in the Good Friday Agreement. This was endorsed by the vast majority of people throughout the island of Ireland, 71 per cent in the Six Counties and 96 per cent in the Twenty-Six Counties.
David Trimble cannot be allowed to overturn or rewrite what the electorates voted for just because of political difficulties he may or may not have within his own Ulster Unionist Party. It should be remembered that, following the publication of the Good Friday Agreement, David Trimble and others were at pains to pronounce that there could be no "cherry-picking", that the Agreement must be accepted in its entirety and followed to the letter.
These comments were of course directed at Sinn Fein. There would be no deviation from the Agreement, we were told. That, of course, was at a time when the unionists were of the opinion that the Sinn Fein leadership could not sell the Agreement to its membership or the republican constituency.
We confounded them and the political commentators when our Ard Fheis endorsed the recommendation that we not only accept the Agreement, but that we change our constitution to enable our elected representatives to take seats in any assembly which would follow elections.
We delivered what the unionists and those in the media opposed to Sinn Fein thought (or hoped) was undeliverable. This put them in disarray and - true to form - what they were saying we could not do is exactly what they are now attempting for themselves: cherry-picking the Agreement.
It is obvious that what David Trimble and the Ulster Unionists are attempting to do is carefully manipulate factions such as the "Union First" group in order to reimpose the unionist veto which they failed to retain under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement. The purpose of the exercise is not about decommissioning but about how best to prevent the change incorporated in the Agreement from being implemented. It is about maintaining unionist superiority even at the expense of destroying what has been achieved through negotiation to date.
Editorials attempting to deflect the focus of responsibility for the gridlock from the Ulster Unionists to Sinn Fein are disingenuous at best and malicious at worst. They are undermining everything which the electorate throughout the island of Ireland voted for in the referendums and which the electorate in the North endorsed in the assembly elections.
All the parties to the negotiations knew exactly what they negotiated on Good Friday. They all had constitutional and legal advisers and David Trimble himself is a law lecturer. Therefore no party has any justification for reneging or attempting to rewrite, either in part of in full, what they signed up to. The Shadow Executive must be instituted immediately. David Trimble must deliver what he was elected to deliver and he cannot be allowed to either cherry-pick from or rewrite what he signed up to with the rest of us on Good Friday. Sinn Fein will deliver on its commitments. - Is mise, Pat Doherty,
Assembly ember,
Vice President,
Sinn Fein,
Shantallow,
Derry.