DUP obtains leaked copy of rival manifesto

The Reverend Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionist Party were cock-a-hoop today after obtaining what they said was the Ulster Unionist Party manifesto days before it is due to be unveiled.

The anti-Good Friday Agreement party published the document 48 hours ahead of David Trimble’s official launch.

It came at the end of a bruising first week of electioneering which saw both parties using the same stunt of unveiling fake versions of each other’s manifesto.

DUP deputy leader Peter Robinson said today he had had the UUP manifesto since Thursday and said that meant ‘‘there are some people Mr Trimble trusts which he shouldn’t.’’

He went on to describe the document as ‘‘frail, limp, vague and uninformative.’’

Mr Robinson said it gave Mr Trimble a ‘‘blank cheque to continue the delivery of the republican agenda.’’

The First Minister was avoiding making pledges as he knew nobody would trust him to deliver on them and now sought a mandate to do whatever he wished, he alleged.

‘‘This manifesto places no limitations on him. It is silent on what his bottom line is on all the key issues.

‘‘Instead the manifesto is a blank cheque which leaves David Trimble to fill in the cost to unionism later.’’

An Ulster Unionist spokesman refused to comment on the DUP claim it had the manifesto, but privately sources confirmed it was the real thing.

The UUP went on the offensive commenting: ‘‘It is the DUP which has no pledges, no promises, no plan and no actual strategy themselves for dealing with Sinn Fein’s refusal to decommission weapons.’’

The manifesto warns the devolved Stormont Assembly is ‘‘jeopardised’’ by the lack of decommissioning, adding that ‘‘inclusive government cannot be sustained indefinitely in such circumstances.’’

It also states: ‘‘The UUP will not be party to any attempt to bury the decommissioning issue or ignore it as other political parties do.’’

Mr Trimble has already lodged his post-dated resignation as First Minister with the Assembly Speaker Lord Alderdice.

He told the Assembly earlier this month it would come into effect on July 1 if the IRA had not moved to decommission its weapons by the June 30 deadline agreed last year.

Meanwhile Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams accused the DUP today of lying to unionists in a bid to get their vote.

‘‘The DUP are saying that they won’t deal with Sinn Fein - for them to say they aren’t dealing with us or working the system (at Stormont) is a complete nonsense, in fact it is a lie.

‘‘The DUP are selling to their electorate a lie, trying to frighten as they have done for the last 30 years - since the rise of Paisleyism - they are trying to frighten sections of the loyalist or unionist people into voting for them as if that will in some way prevent the changes that are coming.’’

The quicker unionists ‘‘wise up to this’’, said Mr Adams, the easier the process for change would be as unionists, instead of resisting the process of change, would be in the engine room of change.