St Andrews, again

I know it's almost too easy to attack the Indo for its sloppy reporting but even by its own standards, its report yesterday that SF "fully" support the St Andrews agreement is appalling. So appalling that one must suspect a deliberate attempt to unsettle our base. Wouldn't be the first time.

My reading of the actual SF position on the matter is fairly simple: we've agreed to the good parts and will continue to negotiate on the rest.

My position hasn't changed, but I think this is a fairly accurate reflection of what the grassroots have been saying. Most of the membership want "progress" as it's come to be defined - i.e. restoration of the institutions - but aren't happy with a lot of the details in the proposals. So it is important that work continues on ironing out those issues.

In the meantime, attention needs to be drawn to the findings by a panel of international investigators of widespread collusion in loyalist murders, including the Dublin and Monaghan bombings.

It is really past time for the Dublin Government to take action against London for its continuing refusal to co-operate in the investigations.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Interesting piece by David (?) Adams in today's Irish Times which has essentially the same analysis as you regarding the SF (and DUP) position to the Agreement (incidentally how can it truly be an agreement if it is only agreed by the parties afterwards?), i.e. agree to the good bits and negotiate the not so good bits. Adams is fairly excoriating of that approach, but in fairness it's hard to see how progress forward could be made in any other way...

Wednesday said...

how can it truly be an agreement if it is only agreed by the parties afterwards?

True, although the same could be said about the GFA.

Anonymous said...

Sorry Wednesday, had a problem with the sign in yesterday and it only registerd 'w' as my name...

But yes, I guess the GFA was agreed, by the public at least afterwards...

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