How eminently sensible of the Alliance Party to redesignate itself as a unionist party to enable it to vote for David Trimble as First Minister. What I particularly loved was the indignation with which the Alliance leader David Ford denounced the fact that some 70 per cent of the elected MLAs were not enough to appoint a First Minister, as if this were some great injustice which came as a big and rather unpleasant surprise.
But this is peace process mechanics. Not merely have the rules been rigged against simple democratic majoritarianism in the North if the unrigged outcome would have been against the peace process; they are also now being re-rigged in support of democratic majoritarianism if the outcome supports the peace process.
Changing the rules
Hmmm. Now how long do you really think political institutions can survive if the rulebook upon which they run their business is regularly changed according to the expected outcome? How long would any soccer game survive if the rules were changed to rugby half way through the first half when it's clear that the homeside was not going to win at soccer rules?
Then, when it's clear that the away side is quite good at rugby too, are the rules changed to cricket? And if they are adept at cricket as well, then does the homeside start playing Quidditch, the rules of which are known to only it?
Look, the unionist people might not be the most imaginative, flexible people in the world, but they are neither stupid nor hypocritical. They don't say one thing and mean another. When a majority of their representatives say they are against something, they are probably speaking for the community which elected them. The peace-process rulebook was devised to ensure that each tribal community had the right to approve or to veto Good Friday political institutions.
Now that rulebook has been withdrawn, and one written in Finnish has been introduced; and if the anti-Good Friday MLAs are found to be masters of Suomi, can we then expect one in Pushtu? Not that I'm against redesignation in principle.
If Alliance people can suddenly become Ulster unionists for the purpose of a single vote, then why should we not extend the principle more widely? For the purposes of a single trip to the bank, I wouldn't mind redesignating myself as J.K. Rowling. "Good morning bank manager, I'd like to withdraw all my savings please." And I might briefly reassign myself the role, duty and appearance of V.S. Naipaul, for the purposes of a single book review.
Nobel Prize
Banks of Green Willow is the finest work in all of Western literature. Its author is an outrageously talented man. Anyone who doesn't buy at least 10 copies of this book so that there is one in every room in the house is a fool. I nominate the author for the Nobel Prize for Literature.
A swift redesignation as chairman of the Nobel Prize committee would follow, and the proposal would be formally accepted. A quick vote by each member, taken in leisurely sequence, of course, so that I can reassign myself as each committee member in turn would then follow, and in no time at all, I'd be on the flight to Stockholm, where my highly entertaining acceptance speech would be delivered by Sir Anthony O'Reilly who has briefly redesignated himself as me - no doubt, an ambition of his for years.
Maybe the rulebook wouldn't allow me to redesignate myself as Nicole Kidman's boyfriend, but I'd happily settle as her loofah. Bathtime my sweet Nicole, my little loofahish voice would ring from the bathroom . . .
Of course, the problem with redesignation is that you've got to get the timing right. So instead of finding a nude Nicole prettily testing the waters with a tentative toe before she sensuously reaches for me, I'd probably find myself being used to scour out the nether regions of her friend, Dame Edna Everage. A harsh fate, you might think, merely because one has undertaken personal redesignation for mere sexual advantage.
But that's the kind of thing that can happen when one pretends to be what one's not - as with pretending to be unionist when one is Alliance in order to elect someone into a position when he is not otherwise electable.
Electoral malpractice
We are used to electoral malpractice in Ireland, to the dead and the underage voting, but this is the first time in Irish electoral history when people have said who they truly are, announced publicly that they were going to personate other people, and then voted, before returning to their old identity.
In a divided place like Northern Ireland, is it all that prudent to have rules so conspicuously changed to suit certain ends? How long can any institution engage the authentic approval of the electorate if its existence is sustained by legal jiggery-pokery and gerrymander?
Was this not the great historical crime of unionism? Did it not institutionally deprive nationalists of political power by rigging the voting in places like Derry and Fermanagh so that the unionist vote counted more than the nationalist vote? Unionists would have justified this because it safeguarded the union, though in the long run contempt for the rules of democracy actually imperilled the union.
And is the opposite equivalent not being done in order to diminish the power of the anti-agreement electorate in the Northern Assembly? And will this electoral fraud sooner or later not undermine the very Good Friday agreement it was intended to strengthen? Then where are we? In deep doodoo is where.