Madam, - In his column of November 19th, Garret FitzGerald went into considerable detail about the assurances that Bertie Ahern would need to give to the electorate that he will not go into coalition with Sinn Féin. While not wishing to paraphrase his article, suffice to say that he doesn't leave Bertie the loophole of accepting even unsolicited Sinn Féin support in forming a government.
Mr Ahern has no difficulty in giving these assurances. He has said that he really, really, really won't share power with Sinn Féin. This should be enough reassurance for anybody. Enda Kenny isn't convinced. He says that he doesn't believe Bertie - a simple, honest statement of disbelief. There is the very slightest suggestion that he thinks that Mr Ahern may not be telling the truth!
Now along comes Martin Mansergh (Opinion, November 26th) to tell us we should believe Bertie. Writing entirely in English, he informs us that any party that receives a sufficient mandate has the right to put itself forward for inclusion in government. This is a useful piece of information and will indeed be a comfort and a reassurance to all political parties at present suffering the indignity of opposition. However, I already knew that, as indeed do many others. This is, I suspect, why parties contest elections.
Mr Mansergh sees some problem in these conditions applying to Sinn Féin. Now if Martin, Garret, Bertie and Enda are so exercised about Sinn Féin in coalition, they must believe that an awful lot of people are going to vote Sinn Féin. They clearly don't think this is a good idea; otherwise they wouldn't be so concerned about Sinn Féin in coalition.
So why don't these gentlemen have the courage simply to confront Sinn Féin directly instead of sending these subliminal messages about Sinn Féin's suitability for government? Surely the electorate is the final arbiter of who will be in power? But the problem is that at the moment republicanism is popular and Sinn Féin just happens to be the republican party. No political party likes to go against the popular feeling. So instead Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Labour Party are all furiously repositioning themselves in the republican camp.
This is proving to be a bit risky. An electorate that sees all these 26-county parties suddenly becoming republican might begin to think that republicanism is the way forward - and they might just vote for a genuine Republican party. - Yours, etc,
NIALL VALLELY, Dublin Road, Newry, Co Down.