RANKIN IS WRONG SAYS HARBINSON
DROMORE solicitor and TUV vice-chairman Keith Harbinson has claimed the DUP lost Euro election votes not because it failed to get across its message but because fewer people were buying into that message.
Mr. Harbinson was responding to Dromore DUP Councillor Paul Rankin, who last week acknowledged TUV leader Jim Allister's strength as a candidate while at the same time insisting the DUP was in no way guilty of a policy 'U-turn'; the party, he said, had failed to get across its message, essentially that direct rule was the only alternative to the current mandatory coalition.
However, Mr. Harbinson, Traditional Unionist Voice candidate in the Dromore by-election tiggered by UUP Councillor Tyrone Howe's resignation, said Mr. Rankin had missed the real message in the DUP's election tallies.
"The European Election did not highlight a failure by the DUP to get across its message," he said. "Rather it highlighted the fact that fewer and fewer people are now willing to buy into that message."
He went on, "The argument that mandatory coalition is better than direct rule did not fool the voters in 1998 when it was the UUP peddling it, and it is not fooling them now.
"Mr Rankin cannot claim that the argument has not been well made by the DUP, as we have been listening to the same argument since David Trimble in 1998 and I believe that horse has been well and truly flogged."
Mr. Harbinson said Councillor Rankin should acknowledge that mandatory coalition was "unsellable" to the people of Northern Ireland. "After all," he said, "his party spent years denouncing it and treating it with the contempt it deserves - or, if it is sellable, then clearly Councillor Rankin is suggesting that the party needs to change its salesman."
Mr. Harbinson insisted the TUV didn't seek a return to direct rule, but used it as a reference point to prove, he said, "that so profoundly unjust is the current system, that Direct Rule without Republican murderers in your government would still be preferable".
The TUV sought an alternative form of coalition, he said, one that provided what he called the very basic right of any civilised country, a right he insisted Northern Ireland was denied - namely democracy.
"Councillor Rankin suggests that it is not achievable," he said. "I would suggest where you seek an alternative you will always find one.
"The current system has failed, and I would remind Councillor Rankin that lauded successes such as the retention of academic selection have not been achieved by the DUP.
"Our education system remains in tatters with no viable alternative put in place despite the new selection process put in place by the schools themselves being merely three months away; the IRA army council remains intact and on standby, further evidence that the current system of governance is flawed beyond comprehension."
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Weather for Dromore
Wednesday 23 May 2012
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