WHAT do you do if you are a political party in a power sharing coalition, as an election approaches, when you can’t demonstrate that you have been governing well?

This is the challenge facing the pro Irish unity Sinn Féin party and the Democratic Unionist Party which seeks to preserve Northern Ireland’s place in the United Kingdom.

These two parties have been locked together in a power sharing executive for nearly twenty years. Smaller parties get fewer seats at the executive table and a formula called the D’ Hondt process distributes departments among them.

These parties face an assembly election next May and they can’t boast that they have proven they are fit to govern.

Here’s a sampling from a long list of their failures.

Lough Neagh, the largest inland lake in the UK and Ireland, is horribly polluted by green algae. The lough provides drinking water for a large section of our population. Nothing is being done about this, probably because the farmers who provide much of the muck that goes into the lough have more influence than environmentalists.

One minister represents both of them.

A big GAA stadium is to be built on the site of the old Casement Park. Parties have wrangled for years over who is to pay for it, how big it is to be and when........

© The Irish Post