Bann - Fixing Our Politics

On question: The terms of the Good Friday Agreement should be reassessed - It is disappointing that the larger parties, along with the British and Irish governments have failed to fully-implement the agreement in the last 25 years and it is now clear that as we transition away from being a society that can be easily divided into two community identities we should look again at how the GFA is serving the people. We particularly lament the lack of consideration given to protection of minority voices and participation of civic society in decision making. Some of the problems with the current political system arise from a lack of implementation of the agreement and from changes made in the St. Andrews Agreement. We do not support any one party maintaining a veto on the functioning of our democratic institutions and would like to see this addressed in any future negotiations. Furthermore we believe removing political representation by altering the agreement to reduce the number of MLAs has proven to be a mistake and has contributed to underrepresentation of the loyalist community, of women and of smaller parties. It is not acceptable that the provisions for a civic forum were not maintained and we would seek to ensure that more participatory and deliberative forms of engagement, such as citizens assemblies, are embedded in how government works. If there were a move away from mandatory coalition, we would like to see protections for minorities, and a mechanism to prevent any one community from excluding the voices of any other. On question: Part of changing the Good Friday Agreement should include ridding the Assembly of Unionist/Nationalist designations - We have never designated as either Unionist or Nationalist and believe these designations to be unhelpful as we move away from a binary sense of identity in NI. On question: Special advisors in Stormont should be selected entirely via employment trawl rather than chosen by Ministers - We believe that standard recruitment processes should be employed when recruiting special advisors, with Ministers being involved in this process in an open and transparent manner. On question: Polling Day should be on public/bank holidays and/or be over a period of 2 days to encourage greater public participation - We believe in politics being something that citizens do rather than have done to us. We would support measures to increase participation in political decision-making, including in supporting more people to vote and to engage in the electoral system. We think democracy should be about more than elections and there should be other ways than via the ballot box for citizens to express a view and hold decision makers accountable.