Alliance predicts gains due to NI voter 'apathy'

Northern Ireland's main unionist and nationalist parties are more likely to suffer from voter apathy in next month's Assembly…

Northern Ireland's main unionist and nationalist parties are more likely to suffer from voter apathy in next month's Assembly election, it was claimed today.

The leader of the cross-community Alliance Party, Mr David Ford, said his party would be offering an alternative to "tribal politics".

With concerns about his own Assembly seat in South Antrim, he insisted that he was heading into the elections confident that he could secure it.

Introducing his party's 21 candidates at Belfast Castle, he said: "Already there is potential for apathy at a time like this, but I do not think Alliance voters will suffer from apathy. There will be apathy among the people who feel the four larger parties have failed Northern Ireland."

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Mr Ford added: "In recent months, the political process has been hijacked by the Government's men in grey suits and handed to the men in balaclavas and bowler hats. They have failed us.

"Alliance is determined to reclaim this process for the people, as it is their future at stake."

Mr Ford said that the situation in Northern Ireland had certainly improved since Good Friday 1998, but it was not as good as everyone had expected it to be five years ago. He said that paramilitary activity continued on both sides with no commitment for any of it to end.

"The issue now is not whether the so-called 'war' is over, but whether paramilitary groups have given up violence and intimidation in all their forms."