THE republican slogan "tiocfaidh ar la" may soon acquire a new meaning for unionists, judging by an election appeal published yesterday in the west Belfast newspaper, La.
The advert is in Irish and purports to come from "An Pairti Aontachtach Uladh", more commonly known as the Ulster Unionist Party. Its origin was a mystery to the party's headquarters on Glengall Street and to the local constituency organisation in west Belfast.
But unionists who wake up this morning to a brave, if uncertain new world, can rest easy on one point. The language used is the purest Ulster Irish, without contamination from west Kerry jigs and reels or the "leprechaun language" disparagingly referred bye the DUP's Sammy Wilson.
Under the slogan "Tabhair guth do Phairti Aontachtach Uladh" (Give a voice to the Ulster Unionist Party), the advert asks the people of west Belfast to give a clear message to the world. That message is: stop the murders, stop the beatings and stop the fraud.
In an apparent appeal to the paper's mainly republican and nationalist readership, it said: "Your vote counts. Maybe it will be your vote that elects a candidate from the Ulster Unionist Party and keeps out one of the crowd called "unionist" murder gangs. Think about it - it is your vote that could make the difference."
The secretary of the UUP's west Belfast constituency organisation, Ms Jean Coulter, dismissed the advert as a gimmick designed to cause trouble for the party.
She blamed opponents on the unionist side for planting it in order to embarrass the party on election day. "We know our enemies from the republican side - they come from the front. Other people come from the back," she said.
The newspaper's publisher, Mr Gearoid O Caireallain, said he was satisfied the advert was genuine. The text was supplied by the party in English and translated by journalists at the paper. La was happy to accept ads from any political party as long as they were happy to pay for them, he said.