The Character of the 1998 Agreement: Results and Prospects
by Brendan O'Leary
From: Aspects of the Belfast Agreement edited by Rick Wilford,
Oxford University Press 2001
That is why, in Irish nationalist eyes, the unilateral suspension of the assembly and the NSMC by the UK in February 2000 was regarded as a breach of the new constitutional arrangements. This step violated the will of the people of Ireland, North and South, expressed in two referendums: neither the Agreement, nor the people(s) had mandated the suspensory power. The Secretary of State and the UK Parliament may have believed they were acting from the best of motives - though that can certainly be debated - but they acted without any serious scrutiny of the constitutional consequences. Their action ripped apart the negotiating work of the last ten years - breaking the UK's commitment to the principles of consent, and the recognition of the Irish people's right to national self-determination, North and South. No UK parliamentarian can now look an Irish republican in the face and say that a united Ireland will occur if there is local majority consent, because any such promise, like every other element of the Agreement, is now vulnerable to the infinitely revisable dogma of parliamentary sovereignty. A state which lets its Parliament break international law, override a referendum,
and suspend - without its assent - an Assembly built upon unprecedented levels of local consent in a referendum, is one which nationalists complain is incapable of being constitutionalised.
6. Brendan O'Leary OUP pp53-55 |
