Posturing on oath would be disastrous

Yesterday’s planned talks of party leaders in the Programme for Government Committee were called off because Ian Paisley was not prepared to attend, following a row over the interpretation of the St Andrews Agreement in regard to the ministerial oath of office.

The DUP leader was insisting that the first minister and deputy first minister must take the oath on November 24, but others contended that this is not necessary because they will only be appointed in shadow form and will not take up their positions until next March.

The oath is analogous to the pledge taken by members of the British parliament. They do not take it when they are nominated, or even when they are elected but when they are about to take their seats in parliament.

Martin McGuinness of Sinn Féin is expected to be nominated as deputy first minister, and the DUP is insisting that he should take the oath of office immediately upon designation to the post.

This would entail avowed support of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI). The St Andrews blueprint envisages the various parties approving or rejecting the agreed terms by November 10.

Although the Sinn Féin árd comhairle is due to vote on the issue in advance of the November deadline, the party’s árd fheis is not thought likely to meet before then, so the question of formal authorisation will still be pending.

The controversy over such an oath has reverberations going back almost two centuries to the period of Catholic emancipation, when Daniel O’Connell refused to take the existing oath of allegiance to the crown, because it would have entailed renouncing certain tenets of his Roman Catholic faith.

More than 90 years later a dispute over another oath, prescribed for members of the Dáil, became the central issue in the controversy over the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921.

Much of this controversy subsequently proved to be mere political posturing. It would seem that the oath is not really the main issue this time. It appears more than a mere coincidence that the St Andrews Agreement had just come under strong criticism in unionist circles.

Jim Allister, a senior figure in the DUP and a member of the European Parliament, had just come out strongly against the St Andrews blueprint.

Mr Allister stressed that he was not necessarily rejecting the agreement but was trying to emphasise that there were many negatives aspects that needed to be addressed by the party.

He is believed to be one of about five DUP Assembly members who have serious reservations over major aspects of the St Andrews Agreement. The DUP has also come in for particularly strong criticism from Bob McCartney of the UK Unionist Party.

He argued that the St Andrews Agreement is worse that the Good Friday Agreement. All of this unquestionably involves an amount of political posturing that could ultimately prove disastrous.

The danger of posturing over the oath should be apparent in the light of our troubled history, seeing that it was the controversy over the Treaty oath, not partition, as many mistakenly believe, which led to the civil war here.