As you read this you may perhaps take comfort from the fact that Ireland north and south is virtually politician free, all those of any standing having decamped to America. St Patrick's Day in the USA is early this year to accommodate George Dubya's plans to begin redesigning the Middle East next week. Needless to say, Irish politicians are only too delighted and excited to celebrate early to accommodate Bush.
Being 3,000 miles away won't mean politician-free TV though. During this week the air will be full of reports about US pressure on Sinn Féin to accept the deal the Irish and British governments are going to lay before the parties in early April. The timing of the US trip could not be better from Sinn Féin's point of view because it is essential that when they do accept the deal, and accept it they will, that they can demonstrate they have been coerced into the position because of unionist demands. You will find the word 'pandering' used a lot as in 'pandering to unionists'.
Sinn Féin leaders will complain loudly, but the truth of the matter is they have come out of the whole process very well indeed. They have won a range of concessions across a huge swathe of issues including policing, justice and 'on the runs' (OTRs) who are outside the Good Friday Agreement. Now it's true the British and SF had reached agreement on many of these matters on previous occasions, notably August 2001 at Weston Park, but if it all comes to pass on this occasion SF can feel very pleased with themselves. They can't admit that though. That would make it too difficult to sell to the 'base' as they call their supporters. Far better to make it look as though unionist demands for 'sanctions' are being shoved down their throat with the collusion of the Irish government. Everyone's agin them.
The fact is, as the Taoiseach says, provision for sanctions is in the GFA, unlike OTRs. It's in paragraph 25 of Strand One. 'Those who hold office should use only democratic, non-violent means and those who do not should be excluded or removed from office under these provisions.' It's the procedure for invoking sanctions which has got SF all steamed up. First, it looks as though David Trimble has finally got the 'letter of comfort' Tony Blair scribbled on Good Friday 1998 activated, a letter SF derided as not worth the paper it was written on. Basically, Blair promised Trimble he would find a way to exclude SF if the IRA didn't behave. They didn't but he didn't. Secondly, they are mighty annoyed because, in contravention of the GFA, Dublin has apparently agreed to abandon cross-community support for exclusion.
Closer inspection, however, shows that unionism's ace negotiator has played the wrong cards again. Trimble correctly believes there's not a chance any proconsul will exclude SF and has been agitating since last year for someone, a 'violence monitor', he could appeal to who could second guess the Northern Secretary.
He's got more than he bargained for. Dublin and London are proposing a commission of four, one appointed by Dublin (probably a nationalist), one by London, one by the US and one from the north, probably a unionist, to sit in judgement, not just on violence, but on the implementation of the whole agreement. That means they will monitor the peripatetic Trimble too. As Peter Robinson points out, there's not a pup's chance they will agree unanimously to recommend excluding SF.
Even more interesting, as spotted by Frank Millar and Garret FitzGerald in the Irish Times, Trimble's demand for someone to second guess our proconsul has not only brought an international dimension into Strand One but also direct Dublin involvement into the affairs of the assembly and executive, something unionists had successfully resisted since Mayhew's 'talks about talks'. Obviously in his anxiety to wrong-foot SF at Hillsborough Trimble accepted the sanctions proposals triumphantly without considering their implications and scampered off like the March Hare.
SF is quite correct. The commission is directed at them. They are going to be held responsible for the actions of the IRA. They also know that no commission is going to make any proposal to our proconsul on suspicion and certainly not because some unionist gets up in the assembly and points a finger. Perhaps the biggest concession the Irish won at Hillsborough was the promise to repeal Mandelson's illegal suspension act. Without that there's nothing to save Trimble the next time he feels like doing a runner from Stormont.
You might find that the only time sanctions are invoked will be against the man who demanded them.
