Sinn Féin is clashing with the SDLP over transfers. The DUP is warning of compulsory Irish classes. But no one knows who will emerge as winners, writes Gerry Moriarty, Northern Editor
Wednesday night week and it will all be over. One of the most important Northern Ireland elections ever - the result dictating whether the North faces into relative stability, political drift, instability or worse.
Not that you would notice. The stakes are huge in this election but none the less the atmosphere is fairly flat.
Politicians generally are keeping their heads down, scraping and scrounging for every first preference and transfer that's going.
It's a PR election. In many of the 18 six-seater constituencies, how the fifth and sixth seats will fall is impossible to predict.
The DUP, UUP, the SDLP and Sinn Féin know that it is these seats that will dictate which nationalist and unionist party holds tribal poll position, and whether pro- or anti-Belfast Agreement unionists are in the political driving seat.
If No unionists overtake Mr Trimble and his Yes unionists, then it appears inevitable that the North will be in for an extended period of direct rule as the British and Irish governments figure how to reconcile the thus far irreconcilable forces of Yes and No unionism.
Even if the UUP shades it over the DUP the Yes/No stresses within the UUP could wreck the prospects of a return to devolution.
Mr Jeffrey Donaldson later this week is due to publish a hardline charter further distancing himself from his leader and imposing additional demands on Sinn Féin and the IRA before he would contemplate sitting in government with republicans.
Much of the radio and TV coverage here has been tame, although there was a bit of a barney on BBC yesterday between Mr Mark Durkan and Mr Gerry Adams over transfers. The Sinn Féin president said he would not be giving any transfers to Alex Attwood, the SDLP candidate in his West Belfast constituency, and generally was less than enthusiastic about republicans transferring to the SDLP.
Mr Durkan's predecessor, Mr John Hume, later weighed in with a statement chastising Mr Adams, saying his comments "can only mean that he would prefer to see a seat in the hands of the totally anti-agreement DUP rather than in the hands of the totally pro-agreement SDLP".
Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Labour ministers and politicians such as Mr Dermot Ahern, Ms Mary O'Rourke, Mr Brendan Smith, Mr John Ellis, Mr Dinny McGinley, Mr Ruairí Quinn, and Ms Liz McManus came out in force at the weekend to join SDLP politicians on the canvass.
Not that that will bother Sinn Féin: it just carried on relentlessly throughout the weekend hunting votes. Mr Adams even went into Ballymena yesterday. The smaller parties such as Alliance, the Women's Coalition and the Progressive Unionist Party moaned that the media focus on bigger parties was squeezing them out.
The Ulster Unionist leader was urging pro-agreement unionists to put aside any cynicism or apathy and turn out on polling day. Realising that DUP voters tend to be hardier souls than his supporters, he was also hoping that the elements would provide a fair day on November 26th.
Mr Trimble also challenged Dr Paisley to a head-to-head television debate but the Doc was having none of it, keeping well clear of the airwaves - his minders trying to ensure that he does not upset the DUP's carefully staged, carefully choreographed campaign of enticing moderate unionists to vote DUP while holding on to its fundamentalist base.
The DUP is still pushing the line that it wants a renegotiated agreement which all nationalists and unionists can endorse - except for Sinn Féin nationalists, that is.
While the party has been playing what Mr Durkan calls its "DUP-lite" card, it certainly reverted to type in its party political broadcast last week where it fed that fundamentalist base some of what it loves best, a diet of good old paranoia.
What would Northern Ireland be like in four years' time if David Trimble remained unionist top dog, asked Mr Peter Robinson.
Well, the Twelfth of July would be banned, you could be jailed for flying the British Union flag, the Garda and PSNI would amalgamate as one force, the Taoiseach would open the Assembly, Northern Ireland would vote for who should sit in Áras an Uachtaráin, and there would be compulsory Irish in schools.
Can't you just picture it: in 2007 every last loyal son and daughter of Ulster struggling with Peig Sayers and the Modh Coinníollach.