After blocking the Northern Ireland Executive meeting yesterday, Sinn Féin’s Gerry Adams is in the US again, whether he’s still wearing his cookie monster watch isn’t clear.. And he’s been pointing, again, to an agreement that “falls a semantic mile short of a deadline”. From the SF press release.
Speaking last night in Cleveland the Sinn Fein President updated activists and supporters on the current crisis in the political process. Mr. Adams told his audience that “the current gridlock exists because the DUP has failed to honour commitments it made in the St. Andrews Agreement in October 2006. Specifically, the DUP has refused to agree a timeframe for the transfer of powers on policing and justice from London to the Assembly and Executive in the north.”
SF’s Conor Murphy was trying a similar, if less explicit, line last night on Hearts and Minds, to the bemusement of the DUP’s Nigel Dodds. Part 1 here.
The question remains, will failure to deliver what they promised others cause the Sinn Féin leadership to take the ball away walk out of the NI Executive.. or not? We’re definitely not in May, after all. At the relevant Assembly Committee meeting on Wednesday, NI deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness claimed [possible paraphrasing] that he wouldn’t be “sitting in a corner in a huff..” Adds Whilst I think that quote is accurate, the BBC has this
“This isn’t something we are going to fall out about”, [Martin McGuinness] said. “I don’t believe we are people who are gong to give up on the process. We are going to continue to work to find a way through. “I don’t think that there is anything in either of us which is about to give up on these issues, they are difficult.”
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