'The most important election in a generation'
May Assembly elections could be epoch-making BY MÍCHEÁL Mac DONNCHA The decision of the DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson at the start of February to pull his First Minister Paul Givan out of the Executive was a pre-election gamble, a desperate bid for Unionist votes in what looks set to be an epoch-making Assembly election on 5 May. Donaldson did his best to portray the Protocol as the latest ‘great enemy of Ulster’, a type of beast always required by the DUP before an election. But this beast is distinctly unthreatening and seems not to worry most Unionists as shown in a poll which had the Protocol well down their list of priorities. The DUP leader marched boldly out banging his Lambeg drum, but it is a broken drum and what once echoed menacingly across the towns and farms of ‘Our
Wee Country’ is now heard only by scattered groups in Orange halls. That poll was published two weeks after Donaldson pulled the plug on the Executive and showed that the Protocol was the biggest concern for just 11.7% of Unionists, while 29.6% prioritised health. If the result was a headache for Donaldson, it would have been made worse by such comments as recorded in one vox pop which struck a chord with many. A young student compared the DUP pulling out of the Executive to herself just giving up her studies before an exam “because it is too hard”. The same poll put Sinn Féin as the party with the largest percentage support, prompting most commen-
• DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson – beating a broken Lambeg drum
anphoblacht UIMHIR EISIÚNA 1 - 2022 - ISSUE NUMBER 1
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