SF must be kept out at all costs

IN the election campaign, the most ignored and avoided question is: why should the DUP be expected to share power with Sinn Féin while politicians in the Republic are reluctant to do so?

While many Southern politicians acknowledge the answer, no one seems to have the courage to say it.

Clearly Paisley and many DUP types spent years spewing out vile anti-Catholic rhetoric which encouraged loyalist paramilitaries to murder, torture and maim many innocent people.

On the other hand, the Provisional IRA started out as a legitimate defender of the Catholic population but degenerated into a despicable terror group with its no warning bombings, sectarian murders and torturing of hundreds of people (before dumping their bodies in roadside ditches).

In this context, the DUP and SF deserve each other. Today, SF has succeeded in airbrushing the murderous campaign of its private army out of history. This is sadly reflected in the national amnesia concerning PIRA atrocities.

Few today recall or know of the Kingsmill massacre where the PIRA stopped a busload of workers, separated Catholics from Protestants, and then gunned down all the Protestants; few remember Patsy Gillepsie, a cleaner in a police station, who was handcuffed by PIRA thugs to the steering wheel of a van and used as a human bomb to kill British army personnel; few remember the cowardly PIRA no-warning bombs which murdered and maimed so many innocent people in Claudy, Enniskillen, Birmingham, Belfast and elsewhere.

How sick is it that Gerry Adams and the media can demand that Bertie Ahern disclose details concerning his finances while SF candidates are asked nothing about their collective criminal past. (It isn’t so long ago since Bertie Ahern stated categorically that the SF leadership knew about the Northern Bank robbery in advance of it happening).

Under no circumstances must any political party in the Republic agree to share power with SF and allow ex-Provo thugs and murderers of gardaí and Irish army personnel a role in the government of this State.

SF will get votes from diehard Provos, from ignorant yobs and from naive types who know nothing about the murders carried out over 30 years. A vote for SF is a thumbs-up to decades of PIRA thuggery and a victory for ignorance and violence.

Anthony Hartnett

Chestnut Grove

Bishopstown

Cork