A VOTE on Belfast's nationalist Lower Ormeau Road has indicated that 95.9 per cent of residents want loyalist parades rerouted away from the road, organisers claimed.
The vote, which was held on Thursday night, was organised by a local priest who had been invited to do so by the Lower Ormeau Concerned Community (LOCC) residents' group. Residents were questioned on their attitudes to Orange Order and Apprentice Boys' marches in the area.
The LOCC said 600 people voted and claimed this was around the same number which had come out to vote in the Belfast Agreement referendum. Its spokesman, Mr Gerard Rice, said the loyal orders would now have to listen to the people of the area. "The whole point in this exercise was not to vindicate our position but to set out clearly an informed position as to what exactly the opinion in our community is and has been for many years.
"We have said that many people within our community would say parades by the loyal institutions were seen as sectarian, coat-trailing exercises; the institutions were seen as anti-Catholic and sectarian organisations. Now we can actually say that 95.9 per cent of our community believe that to be true." However, the vote was questioned by unionists and others. Mr Vincent McKenna, of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Bureau, said there were more than 2,000 registered electors in the area. This meant "less than 20 per cent" of those in the area objected to parades.
Mr Dawson Baillie, the Belfast county grand master of the Orange Order, said the vote did not encompass the loyalist Donegall Pass area and the Ballynafeigh district above the Ormeau Bridge. "We believe that it's our right and everyone's right to walk down a main thoroughfare. We're not going into side streets on the right-hand side of that part of the Ormeau Road or the left-hand side."
Ms Dawn Purvis, of the Progressive Unionist Party, said the poll would not help to resolve the situation. "You don't get people to enter into talks on the basis of no parade. You get people to enter into talks on the basis of an accommodation. If that poll had been held to show what concerns the people of Lower Ormeau have over loyal order parades, that would have been better, that would have been a way forward."