Election Diary: A police raid has caused embarrassment to the Ulster Unionist Party, writes Dan Keenan
It has been a rough start to the Ulster Unionist campaign. A protracted series of rancorous Ulster Unionist Council meetings ended just a few weeks ago.
However, the party is already tackling fresh divisions. Former leader Lord Molyneaux and outgoing MP and former party president Martin Smyth have backed the DUP candidate in South Belfast. Lord Molyneaux is expected to appear today at the campaign launch in South Antrim of another agreement sceptic and arch-critic of David Trimble, David Burnside.
Added to these difficulties are the police raids on the offices and home of sitting East Belfast assemblyman Michael Copeland, which have prompted the postponement of the party's manifesto launch today.
Mr Copeland's addresses were searched by the PSNI on Friday morning. The officers removed a computer, bank statements, credit cards and mobile phones. Mr Copeland said he was told they were looking into an allegation made against him over the sale of land. Police said searches were carried out as part of a money- laundering investigation. In the wake of the Northern Bank robbery and the clampdown on UDA racketeering, these are particularly sensitive claims.
Officers visited Mr Copeland's office at Castlereagh Borough Council, his assembly office at Albertbridge Road and his home at Gilnahirk Road during the raids. Mr Copeland has said he is baffled by the allegations.
Mr Copeland insists he is not guilty of any wrongdoing. "I feel that there is something malicious at the back of this," he said. "It has the whiff of a dirty tricks campaign and the feel of a crude attempt to smear my reputation and that of my colleagues in the run-up to a general election.
"If this is the objective of those involved, I regret to inform them that I will not be deterred by such crude attempts to slander my name."
As if this was not enough, the UUP has been at the centre of another storm, this time in relation to its advertising pitch to voters. Claiming that "decent people" vote Ulster Unionist, some party members have had to make lengthy defences of what appears to be an accusation that the "indecent" vote for other parties.
The DUP continues to portray its main rivals as "push-over unionists" who have buckled repeatedly in the face of Sinn Féin pressure. Mr Trimble is portrayed at the man who gave in to the abolition of the RUC, who relented in the face of demands to open the Maze prison gates and who has assented to an all-Ireland structure which compromises the union.
The UUP has countered with calls for Dr Ian Paisley's party to tell voters what they had agreed with Sinn Féin before last December's failed deal to restore the assembly and other Stormont institutions.
Yesterday, Mr Trimble, perhaps reflecting a view that the ground is shrinking beneath his party, called for a coalition of the centre.
Interviewed on the BBC by David Frost, he suggested a cross-community administration involving his party and the SDLP.
He urged voters to reinvigorate the centre, adding that the "extremes" of Sinn Féin and the DUP had failed to deliver agreement and should be consigned to opposition.
"I think it would be much better now to let the parties and the extremes have a bit of time in opposition, where they can sort themselves out," he said.
SDLP leader Mark Durkan has stood by his claim that the only solution has to be a fully inclusive one, based on the Belfast Agreement.
"I think trying to do things without parties or against parties does not work. We have to go forward on an inclusive basis," he said.
Sinn Féin's Conor Murphy, the favourite to succeed Séamus Mallon in Newry and Armagh, hit back.
"It should come as no surprise," he said, "that the UUP leader, David Trimble, is harking back to the days when the unionist establishment dictated the pace of political change and elements of the SDLP, blinded by party political interests, support this position."
It has been a bruising start to the campaign and there is more to come in the next fortnight.