How to Get. Around Paisley.

THE head-scratching that the victory of the Rev. Ian Paisley has caused in the Irish peace process has continued all this week.

Even the most optimistic commentators see no way in which the arch bigot, whose newspaper once called Catholics “rats with legs,” can be persuaded to share power with Sinn Fein, who are anathema to his very being.

Paisley is a 16th century fundamentalist in a 21st century preacher’s garb. His hatred of Catholicism comes directly, he says, from the Book of Revelation. He has called the Pope the anti-Christ and told Sinn Fein that, “As a principle I don’t work with murderers.”

Hardly promising terrain for an outreach that could bring together the former political wing of the IRA and the personification of bible thumping unionism.

As the largest parties on both sides, however, the only way forward is to somehow find an accommodation, and failing that create a new formula for progress in Northern Ireland.

Paisley’s way would be a full scale renegotiation of the Good Friday Agreement, something that both governments can never allow to happen. We must always note that up to 70% of the electorate voted in favor of the Agreement in the recent elections. In any normal democracy that would be more than enough to assure its future.

An interesting way out of the conundrum was suggested in the pages of the Irish Times last week by two academics, Brendan O’Leary and John McGarry, both long time observers of the Northern Ireland political scene who have been very influential in the past.

Both men, now based in North America, were first to suggest that the d’Hondt system of governance be established in Northern Ireland. D’Hondt ensures that both sides of the divide are represented on as equal a basis as possible and that there is no majority rule by one side or the other.

That has worked very well with the exception of the post of first minister and deputy first minister, as they point out. In every other position in Northern Ireland’s Assembly government the d’Hondt rules held. In other words, when a party was offered a position in government they had the option to refuse it, but if they did, another party on the same side was offered the job instead.

However, when it came to first minister and his deputy there was no such mechanism. David Trimble, for instance, was able to resign with no consequence to his party, on separate occasions, despite the fact that the framework never envisaged such an eventuality. (In fairness, it must be pointed out that is was the Nationalist deputy first minister Seamus Mallon who first used the resignation option to secure progress as he saw it.)

What O’Leary and McGarry are suggesting is that the d’Hondt system be applied to the title of first minister. In other words, there is no option of resignation, but if there is the position is offered to others.

Paisley then would know that if he resigned, someone else in his party might accept the job, or failing that it would pass back to the Ulster Unionist leader Trimble.

It is the kind of smart outside the box thinking that has characterized the contributions of O’Leary and McGarry. The two governments are capable of changing the sequence so that d’Hondt rules prevail in all aspects including the top jobs.

Would Paisley refuse office if that were the system, knowing that it would pass to his dreaded enemy Trimble? Hardly likely. 

Or if he did, some of the younger, more ambitious men in his party might seize their chance in order to block Trimble. In other words, the Paisleyites would be forced to be proactive, as against merely continuing in their wrecking role.

McGarry and O’Leary may have pointed out a way out of the current dilemma. The British government has proven itself very resourceful in the past when it needed to stretch rules to keep the peace process moving. They should consider acting on this suggestion.