McGuinness and Paisley on Course for Power

THE Reverend Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness looked on course last night to be Northern Ireland’s next First and Deputy First Ministers should devolution return later this month.With the first set of results being declared in eight constituencies in the Assembly election, Mr Paisley’s Democratic Unionists (DUP) looked like making a series of gains at the expense of a fragile Ulster Unionist vote.Gerry Adams’s Sinn Fein also appeared to be stretching its lead over its main nationalist rival, the SDLP.As of 5pm, only 12 seats had been filled, with the DUP winning seven, Sinn Fein three, the SDLP one and the cross-community Alliance Party one.Strenuous DUP efforts to manage their vote under the Northern Ireland Assembly’s complex proportional representation system looked like paying dividends, with the party targeting gains in North Antrim, East Belfast, Strangford, Upper Bann and East Londonderry.Prime Minister Tony Blair and Irish Taoiseach Bertie Ahern have given Northern Ireland’s politicians a March 26 deadline to revive power-sharing.Both leaders’ hopes of achieving that goal were raised when Sinn Fein decided for the first time in its history to endorse the police in Northern Ireland – one of the key demands of the DUP.However, there were suggestions from senior DUP figures last night that the party was still looking to buy more time to assess whether Sinn Fein’s move on policing was genuine. Democratic Unionist MP Jeffrey Donaldson led calls for the British and Irish governments not to pull the plug on powersharing if the March 26 deadline was not met.

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