A 15-year search for a political settlement in Northern Ireland cleared its final hurdle on Tuesday, when unionists and nationalists voted to transfer policing and criminal justice powers to Belfast, creating the province’s first justice minister since the Troubles erupted four decades ago.
Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), who were barely on speaking terms a few years ago, joined forces with the nationalist SDLP in the Northern Ireland assembly to endorse a deal on policing, hammered out last month.
Northern Ireland’s justice minister will be appointed on April 12 and is likely to be David Ford, the leader of the centrist Alliance party.
The breakthrough was marred by a row when the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), which governed Northern Ireland for five decades until the imposition of direct rule in 1972, voted against the deal.
UUP leader Sir Reg Empey, who recently formed an electoral pact with the Conservatives, said he had voted no because his party did not believe that the four-party power-sharing executive was functioning properly.
“We exercise our rights, refusing to bow to the blackmail and bullying to which we have been subjected in recent weeks,” said Empey, the minister for employment and learning.
The UUP hit out after facing intense pressure from London and the US to fall in behind Tory leader David Cameron, who has backed devolution of the criminal justice system.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown phoned Empey shortly before Tuesday’s vote, while former US president George Bush pleaded with Cameron last week to persuade the UUP to support the deal.
Empey’s unionist rival, the DUP, who has overtaken the UUP in recent years, focused on what could happen after the vote.
“The move is about completing and maintaining devolution, it is about whether we move forward together as a society,” said DUP leader Peter Robinson, who managed to persuade all but one of his 36 assembly members to back the devolution deal.
The vote secures an extra £800 million (US$1.2 billion) for policing and justice that Brown promised the assembly if they backed the transfer. It also adds an extra 1,200 police officers.
The prime minister praised the main parties for reaching the deal on an issue that almost broke the power-sharing government.
“Today the politics of progress have finally replaced the politics of division in Northern Ireland. The completion of devolution, supported by all sections of the community in Northern Ireland, is the final end to decades of strife. It sends the most powerful message to those who would return to violence: that democracy and tolerance will prevail,” Brown said.
Matt Baggott, chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, last night welcomed the vote as a step forward.
“Devolution will strengthen our service. It will help to ensure that communities receive the policing service that not only they deserve, but that we are committed to delivering,” he said.
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