Trust fund empty for SF
There was one little problem with the assurance. Nobody believed it.
It has less credibility than the horoscope in this morning’s newspaper.
No matter how much it rants on about securocrats and sinister forces, Sinn Féin has become the political party who cried ‘wolf’.
We’ve gone down the road of Sinn Féin denials before. They took us for patsies when they did their Pontius Pilate act about involvement in the killing of Garda Jerry McCabe. The latest explanation from Gerry Adams - that it was authorised at a low level of the organisation - was a couple of rungs below contempt.
And then we entered Walt Disney territory. The three Irishmen weren’t up to anything dicky in the Colombian jungles. They were eco-tourists who wanted to get a rare glimpse of the lesser spectacled bear. Oh yeah?
Later, the tune was changed to them being there studying the Colombian peace process. Yep, great to see them moving from mortar bombs to mortar boards.
Now Sinn Féin is saying that it will resist any attempts to criminalise the party or the IRA. But you have to take that in the context of what Adams said before Christmas that no IRA volunteer could ever be considered a criminal. In that wacky mindset, all activities - including robbing a bank and putting a slug into somebody - are justified as long as they are on behalf of the organisation.
The assessment from both governments yesterday was - not to put too fine a point on it - bleak. Bertie Ahern and even the normally excitable Michael McDowell remained relatively understated and sober.
The reason for that was clear. There was no argument or convincing in it. As far as both were concerned, Hugh Orde’s word was writ. Orde is a professional policeman who can’t be subject to the old crytpo-unionist smear, despite Sinn Féin’s antipathy to him. The likelihood is that both Ahern and McDowell relied on other sources - most likely the gardaí - to persuade them that Orde was correct.
The PSNI’s chief constable was at pains to point out that what he had to say was not politically motivated nor had come about because of political pressure. It was, he said, simply because it made “operational sense”. You have to be inclined to believe him because, as of now, Hugh Orde has credibility and Sinn Féin - because of its previous record on ‘fessing up to responsibility - has none.
Orde acknowledged that what he said would have political consequence. It doesn’t take too many smarts to analyse the ramifications.
To staccato them out: There will be no summit. There will be no devolution. There will be no agreement. There will be another purgatorial period of inertia and stagnation.
How long it will take to get back onto the rails will be measured in months and years. Tony Blair did all the heavy lifting with the DUP, convincing them that it could deal with Sinn Féin staccato - and its assurances - at face value. Blair was white-knuckled with anger yesterday, according to reliable sources. Adams and McGuinness’s credibility with the British government is now in shreds.
There is one scenario that gives the party a get-out clause. Given its record, it may stretch credulity. But just because Sinn Féin misled before doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not telling the truth now. The party does have a point that there is no inculpatory evidence.
But we are in a game of high political stakes and whatever it says about due process, the party’s stock is at rock bottom on the believability level. If Sinn Féin says the IRA had no hand, act nor part in the raid, it will have to produce evidence.
All other scenarios are dismal. If the IRA was behind the robbery, it raises the spectre that Sinn Féin was in the final stretches of the endgame while its Siamese twin was still in the maw of criminality. If the raid was carried out by an IRA unit without authority, it raises equally discomfiting questions about the republican leadership and its control of a movement it claims to represent.
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