ALLIANCE LEADER David Ford has said his party will not nominate a candidate to be the North’s first justice minister until he has assurances about how the new department will be run and until he receives commitments on tackling sectarianism.
Party leaders including new SDLP leader Margaret Ritchie are today due to meet First Minister Peter Robinson and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness at Stormont to discuss applications for the post.
While Mr Ford remains favourite to take the ministry, he was last night holding out for more assurances about how the department of justice would operate and the so-called shared future strategy for improving community relations.
Meanwhile, the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) is today expected to state it has decommissioned its weapons, marking a further step towards the normalisation of Northern politics.
The expected announcement is coming just a day before a deadline for paramilitary decommissioning set by Northern Secretary Shaun Woodward.
The Hillsborough Castle Agreement, concluded on Friday, has a tight timescale for dealing with policing and justice, and parades. Mr Robinson and Mr McGuinness are hoping to identify candidates for the justice post today while tomorrow a six-member working group is to be established to report on viable ways of dealing with contentious parades.
The assembly will vote on the Justice Minister on March 9th, with formal appointment to the post due on April 12th.
Ms Ritchie and her party’s Assembly group are meeting this morning to discuss whether she should be nominated for the post.
Had the d’Hondt system of appointing ministers – used to elect other members of the Executive – be applied, the SDLP would have been in line to run the department.
However, under new legislation the Justice Minister is to be appointed by cross-community vote. This means the DUP and Sinn Féin together can elect the minister based on the number of seats they hold.
At the SDLP annual conference in Newcastle, Co Down, yesterday Ms Ritchie was elected the new SDLP leader winning, sources said, 222 votes to 187 votes for her rival, Dr Alasdair McDonnell, the South Belfast MP.
Mr Ford has long been viewed as likely to take the justice ministry. He said yesterday, however, that Alliance needed firmer commitments before it would nominate a candidate. “We need to see more detail on how a Department of Justice would operate and commitments on a shared future policy.”
Ulster Unionist leader Sir Reg Empey and his Assembly group are also meeting today to discuss options. The UUP says it favours the retention of d’Hondt but that an entire new Executive should be elected under this system – a proposal the dominant DUP and Sinn Féin are virtually certain to reject.
At the weekend conference, Ms Ritchie criticised the Hillsborough deal as a “temporary fix based on a corruption of democracy” even though Taoiseach Brian Cowen told the SDLP on Saturday night that the British and Irish governments believed it was the best way forward.