A coalition of the willing should replace enforced power-sharing in Northern Ireland, the Ulster Unionist Party said today.
Leader Sir Reg Empey said it was time to consider scrapping the D'Hondt system for deciding positions in the Assembly and added that the days of sectarian voting may be numbered.
"If we are moving into a new era, which I hope we are, where normal politics becomes more important and constitutional politics less so then I would be looking forward to the day when governments could be constructed on a different basis, a coalition of the willing with some cross-community element," he said.
"The Lebanon is the only other model and that isn't a great idea so we need to be looking at some fresh thinking."
He was speaking after a meeting of the UUP's Assembly grouping which is to raise the matter with the Assembly's Executive and Review committee.
The D'Hondt system for distributing political positions was established by the 1998 Belfast Agreement as a confidence-building measure to ensure community equality.
It distributes offices on the strength of the party's membership of the Executive.
Traditionally many have voted along religious lines but Sir Reg said that with greater prosperity the politics of competing ideas could gain the ascendancy.
PA