Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
DON'T LET GO ULSTER GO BACK TO HELL
Clinton urges public to defend gains of the peace process
BILL Clinton last night urged Northern Ireland to recommit to peace – or risk sliding back to hell.
The former US President, 71, was speaking ahead of today’s 20th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement.
Mr Clinton also told voters to stop punishing those politicians who seek accommodation.
He added: “No one will drop off the face of the Earth with reasonable compromise. The only thing that would be calamitous would be to let the whole thing die. To confine ourselves to purgatory or go back to hell.”
VOTERS in Northern Ireland have to stop punishing politicians who compromise, former US president Bill Clinton has said.
He linked political paralysis to the rise of authoritarianism and warned the 15-month stalemate at Stormont would eventually reach its limit.
The ex-president said it was easy to underestimate the fragility of the system following the 1998 Good Friday Agreement which he helped create.
He told a Dublin audience: “No one will drop off the face of the Earth with any of the reasonable compromises that have been discussed.
“The only thing that would be calamitous would be to let the whole thing die. To confine ourselves to purgatory or go back to hell instead of going into a future.”
Mr Clinton conjured an of a political purgatory of broken hopes and a sea of lost chances.
He said: “If you do that, slowly you will begin to lose your democracy in the North. You have to be willing to give.
“Compromise has to become a good thing, not a dirty word and voters have to stop punishing people who make those compromises and start rewarding them.” Mr Clinton said inclusive groups made better decisions than homogeneous ones and too much paralysis meant voters began to elect those who would be the best boss, an allusion to the strongman dictatorships in other parts of the world.
He added: “The most important thing is the peace is held and nobody has questioned democracy.
“There is a limit imposed by constant paralimage
Compromise has to become a good thing, not a dirty word BILL CLINTON DUBLIN LAST NIGHT
ysis because even if the economy stays static, the politics don’t.
“That is the challenge that every one of us faces today who cares about this.
“There is simply a limit to how long people can go on. It is about the people who live there and their kids and grandkids.”
Mr Clinton has bolstered peacemaking in places like Colombia.
Drawing on lessons elsewhere, he added: “There is a limit to the elasticity of inertia, of paralysis. You should celebrate the anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement not for what happened but for what can happen.”
Mr Clinton visits Belfast today where he will receive the freedom of the city alongside his former special envoy to Northern Ireland George Mitchell.
He recalled staying up into the small hours the night the deal was struck, getting only a couple of hours sleep as he conversed with his special representative in Belfast.
He concluded: “In his Nobel Prize speech Seamus Heaney also said of WB Yeats that his intent was to clear a space in the mind and the world for the miraculous.
“And 20 years ago tomorrow, 17 hours late, everybody impatient, some brave people cleared a space for the miraculous - you should fill it.”
Meanwhile, former Prime Minister Tony Blair said the final days he spent ensconced in Castle Buildings as he attempted to clinch the deal were some of the most extraordinary of his 10 years in power.
He added: “We were involved in this incredibly complicated and difficult negotiation which were seesawing between success and failure throughout the three days.
“What was at stake was of immense magnitude – to try to put an end to the violence that disfigured the lives of people and cost the lives of people for many years.
“It was an event which required extraordinary focus and for those three days, I think we managed six hours sleep.”