THE Deputy First Minister’s remarks on Presidential voting rights are another sign that the DUP will never understand what power-sharing actually mean. And they are instructive in how the main party of unionism views Irish citizenry and the Good Friday Agreement itself.
While nationalism and republicanism recognise and champion the critical legal certainty that citizens living in the North have the birthright to identify as “Irish, British or both”, and that this will be the case both before and after a united Ireland, it would appear that Emma Little-Pengelly wishes to dilute our Irishness to something somehow aspirational.
In her remarks at a press conference with Taoiseach Mícheál Martin and First Minister Michelle O’Neill, when asked about the extension of Irish Presidential voting rights to citizens in the North. she said – and this is worth reading slowly – "In relation to Presidential voting rights, Northern Ireland has a head of state, and that head of state reflects the political reality. It's the difference between a political reality and a political aspiration."
She cautioned that "we need to be very careful not to overstep into that mark, which is around the delicate equilibrium of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement, recognising the legitimacy and aspiration, but the difference between aspiration and political reality, in that Northern Ireland remains entirely within the United Kingdom."
Our right to full Irish citizenship is not a hot water bottle to comfort us. It is our birthright. The denial of our right to exercise a franchise in the Presidential election this week is an outstanding outrage and a kick in the teeth to us all and the peace agreement; and it is an indictment of Leinster House and its partitionism. Planning to change this is not an overstep. Indeed, the opposite has been the case to date with the stubborn nervousness and cowardice of Dublin failing to defend Irish citizens since partition and the Good Friday Agreement being Irish history’s shame. A bit of overstep would be nice once in a while, at least we would think we were being seen. But that is not what this is.
That is only half of the ludicrousness of Little-Pengelly’s statement. Her statement seems to suggest that while we remain under London’s rule our citizenship is aspirational. It is not. All of the population who live here can recognise the King in London or the President in Phoenix Park as theirs. And they can even claim both, sure why not? God knows we get little enough. And that is guaranteed before, during and after a border poll. That is reality. In black and white. And voted for.
The DUP’s churlishness and its howling at the moon, rather than engaging with meaningful processes of relationship-building with long-term understanding is old news, but it really is so tiresome.
The party has never given full-throated commitment to power sharing, because they want to deny that constitutional change is coming, to pretend their power is everlasting. That is where the real difference between reality and aspiration lies.
If they think patting us on the head with a patronising “there and no further”, while Emma Little-Pengelly, elected to nothing, tries to erase our right to Irish citizenship, is going to deter our determination to realise equality and the full exercise of our rights, they have no grip on “reality” whatsoever.
