The UK Government’s economic measures to tackle the country’s financial deficit will start to impact on all citizens in 2011. It will be a tough year ahead for everyone. The cost of living is rising, with households already noticing  increased costs creeping through to the weekly shopping. Just as households need to keep their spending under control, the need for good and efficient government at all levels is essential. Northern Ireland is not an exception in this regard.

Northern Ireland media focus in early 2011 seems to be on health inefficiencies and disorganisation, before that water was in chaos; before that, roads; an education department at odds with its schools; an agriculture minister who failed to properly account for the land being used for farming. And so on…

With each Department being largely independent of the Executive, except when requiring collective cover, it is no surprise that initial budget ‘agreement’ failed to indicate anything more than broad allocation of spending across Departments. Subsequent budget negotiation appears to be largely through the media rather than round the Executive table. The budget process is not building confidence. Rather than rethinking and shrinking government, the talk is of expanding revenue – taxing to spend on the same old, same old.

It is difficult to be very positive about politics in Northern Ireland in the months, or years, ahead. In almost every aspect of Government the Stormont Executive is a sorry excuse. Inspiration, ideas and impact are absent. Ideology, intransigence and incompetence seem to be the order of the day, to a greater or lesser degree.

Of course Party leaflets will drop through the letter boxes in the run-up to May’s election outlining the achievements of this government, of which almost every Northern Ireland political Party is now part.  Some of this is already being tested by the DUP and Sinn Fein, to greater or lesser success. Most 2011 election information will be little different to that provided for the Westminster election in 2010 – can anyone remember any of the key election promises from less than a year ago? Fine words bearing little momentum towards, or even capacity to kick start, necessary change.

There is no doubt that Northern Ireland would benefit from an effective opposition.

If ever there were a time for the UUP and SDLP to ditch government and enter ‘opposition’ it would be now. They are largely irrelevant to a Government steered by the DUP and Sinn Fein, serving only to underscore the validity of the system; strengthened in 2010 by the arrival of the Alliance Party to the trough.

Of course there is no ‘money’ available for an official opposition. Naturally, financial consideration comes before principle and doing the right thing.

The failure of a DUP/Sinn Fein led government is no surprise because there is no common cause; no common vision binding together the programme for government. Compulsory or enforced coalition, with a prohibition on voting a party out of government guarantees deadlock and failure.

Far from being “an extraordinary endorsement” of progress in NI, as suggested by Secretary of State Owen Paterson, Martin McGuinness as First Minister would only prove that the deck chairs on the Titanic have once again been moved.

The jobs that seem safe at present are those of the political class, who huddle around any of their number under threat. This represents the most often quoted success of Stormont, that it exists. That seems to be enough for our politicians. In the words of Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness respectively, following on from Hillsborough 2010:

“… there will be no going back to the past.”

“We need to make life better for our children and for our grandchildren.”

Of course we cannot go back in time, but neither should we stagnate without change. With the authority of power comes responsibility to use that power wisely ‘for our children’; and if the electorate believes that power is not being used wisely, that the future being shaped by an administration is not attractive, then surely it should have the democratic choice to vote for change.

The Belfast Agreement is over twelve years old.  It was a creation of its moment. Time to move on.

A government that cannot be fundamentally changed has no democratic mandate. Just ask an Egyptian.

It often seems that the last issue to be considered by the Parades Commission is the particular parade under consideration.

Of course the Parades Commission is operating in a context that is highly politicised; though it is meant to be outside ‘political considerations, that idea was dashed when a parade on the Ormeau Road was denied in deference to the ‘Peace Process’ - which looked like not placing responsibility on republicans not to riot. The ‘political process’ has been elevated to over-write all other considerations and the consequent political interference or indifference with respect to parades has been to the detriment of the Rule of Law. No better example of that is the absolute breakdown in authority evident in violence across Northern Ireland in the week of the 12^th July 2010.  Politics and police just stood there taking the abuse and with little evidence of a longer-term response.

While parading by the Orange Order may have provided a context at the 12th, there was little evidence that the July rioters cared deeply whether the Orange Order paraded or not.  The principal battle for hearts and minds is being played out in the Republican/nationalist communities – violence in Lurgan and Londonderry, and elsewhere, was pure thuggery to demonstrate that Sinn Fein’s support for the devolution of policing means little on the streets. The new Republicans on the block have learned well from those who similarly brought anger to the streets in the past: a progression from one generation to the next.

Meanwhile a review of legislation on parades and protest is on-going. The OFMDFM consultation is now the seventh review of the Parades Commission since its inception.

From the outset the Parades Commission was an unparalleled and unwarranted interference with the peaceful expression of a people’s culture and had significant potential to undermine of the Rule of Law. There is no moral or human rights justification for political and legal interference with cultural expression: quite the contrary.  Trade Unionists claim the limitation within the OFMDFM paper are unique in Europe forget that they failed to raise a voice on the Parades Legislation which was similarly unique and intolerant.

Since the inception of the Parades Commission there has been a clear admission by Republicanism of a planned process to use the issue of parades for political advantage.

Sinn Fein has made no secret of its political activity in raising the parades issue.  In the event the political process has been used as a sledgehammer to demonise, diminish and disrupt the exercise of legal, peaceful and fundamental freedom of cultural expression.  The policy has been one of creating a cultural apartheid where no Protestant is seen, heard, or permitted within a stones throw of a designated, reserved, “sanitised” nationalist space:

There were a number of distinct advantages for Republicans in moving forward on the parades agenda. First it plays to the gallery and maintains a wedge between communities. In the absence of armed conflict it maintains a war of words that retains simmering sectarian tensions on which republicanism relies for purpose. This was a political hammer being used to crack a cultural nut. While leaders of the Orange Order may from time to time make pronouncements on broad political matters, it does not function as a political organisation. It was always poorly suited to a public political argument and certainly not to understand or challenge a political machine.

Political interference has prolonged the parades issue in Northern Ireland.  The Parades Commission was itself a buck-passing exercise by the NIO, supported by the police – a firewall to take the heat off the Secretary of State and Chief Constable.  It was born of political strategy and suckled by the political expediency of politicians who wanted to be seen as leading the fight (both sides), and by the demands of the ‘political process’ that meant not confronting the realities of rights and responsibilities as they should be within a society where the Rule of Law is paramount.

How the placing of the Parades issue into the Office of OFMDFM will not result in political interference/dealing/brokering is outside thedissenter’s ability to imagine.  The present proposals seem to have been predicated on a political deal at Hillsborough.  That the issue of Parades is being discussed in the context of a political deal is itself a weakness and indicative of a fundamental flaw in strategic thinking.  A principled and fair outcome to the resolution of parades issues should be a local matter, having due respect for the Rule of Law, and not reliant on externalities.  If the Review itself depends on a political deal, then how will parades not continue to be politicised and used to modulate tensions and division to the benefit of a few and to the detriment of all?

The process outlined by this most recent consultation process merely transfers the Parades Commission from being a quasi-judicial ‘independent’ body within the orbit of the NIO, to a quasi-judicial office within the orbit of the OFMDFM.  This does not inspire confidence in transparency, accountability or an end to political interference.    A previous ‘Quigley Report’ on parades had positive ideas with respect to an open, accountable and transparent process of addressing parading issues.  There were elements of the mediation aspects of that Report which were woolly, but if offered a strategic view rather than political fix.

The current proposals do not offer significant encouragement to believe that a Shared Future is possible while a process exists in law that can be used to politically delineate and define ‘our streets’, and ‘our territory’. That this process is given legal standing does not remove legislation on parades and protest from the status of base sectarian harassment of folks wishing to be free to express their culture or viewpoints in peace and without fear of threat or violence.

In a normal society, one in which cultural pluralism is the norm and freedom of conscience is cherished, where another’s culture and views are respected, there would be no need for parades regulation by whatever name that body is known.  The Ashdown Interim Consultation Report assumed the premise of a ‘normal’ society.  If OFMDFM believed that Northern Ireland society has the ability to move forward then why consider the regulation of a people’s culture to be at all necessary?  How does legislation that tends towards cultural apartheid and unreasonably and unfairly penalises a particular culture.

The Rule of Law should be sufficient to protect freedoms without regulatory bodies open to political interference. But authority, and the leadership that falls from that place of respect and standing in either politics or policing, seems absent. That we are where we are on parades and protests shows an attitude that all too readily accepts intolerance and exclusion as a norm, and for some is a political necessity.