Sunday 7 September 2008

SDLP call for an end to designation, UUP call for end to mandatory coalition

The SDLP Leader, Mark Durkan, in a speech to the British Irish Association in Oxford called for an end to the system whereby political parties in NI fighting Assembly elections have to declare themselves as ‘unionist’ or ‘nationalist’ (or other). The system has always been discriminatory in that it means that a ‘nationalist’ or ‘unionist’ MLA is given more influence than an ‘other’.
Meanwhile, the UUP Leader, Sir Reg Empey has called for an end to the system of mandatory coalitions.

Both Empey and Durkan reckoned both had been necessary evils at the time of the Good Friday Agreement but each believed that issues could be better provided for.

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