If You Ask Me
by Malachi O'Doherty

It is not going to be the word of the Republican leaders that makes up most people's minds about whether or not the Provisional IRA killed poor Denis Donaldson.

That movement has no credibility left, having lied so often.
And, in a strange way, its own propagandist impulses, and media slickness, play against it.

The speeches which Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness, Pat Doherty and Conor Murphy made after the killing, some of them just within minutes of the news breaking, were all interchangeable.They sought to make the same three basic points - condolences to the family - we didn't do it - and Donaldson's own masters in the security services have to be in the frame.That last point, pointing the finger at the police, fits with a consistent campaign to tarnish the police as politically motivated against the peace process.

None of the Sinn Fein spokespersons sounded like ordinary perplexed observers, grappling with a surprise development. When the IRA leadership and Sinn Fein leadership can say within the hour that none of their members did this, sensible people are entitled to ask: how do you know?

And ordinary sensible people are also entitled to ask: how come we always end up in a mess like this? How come every time the peace process shows some sign of moving, something happens to undermine the credibility of the Provisional movement?

This week's developments are shocking but they are familiar. Over and over and over again, the Republican movement broke faith with the process, by shooting a drug dealer, by messing about in Colombia, by robbing a bank, by killing an informer. And, if this time, they have been wrongfooted by dissident Republicans, or angry traditionalists, or by some of their own people acting on their own initiative, and find themselves unable to persuade unionists of their clean hands and good faith - well that's inevitable, a by-product of their past behaviour.

If your son borrows your car and crashes it every Friday night, and this Friday night your car has been borrowed and crashed again - well you're still going to suspect him.

If one organisation has for decades killed every known and suspected informant inside the IRA and then another informant is killed, how can that organisation expect to be entirely above suspicion?

And the political implications of this are simple and unchanged. There can be no executive until Ian Paisley or his successor can face the unionist electorate and assure them that he trusts in the word of the leadership of Sinn Fein.

And the electorate doesn't need to know the precise details of who robbed the Northern Bank or who killed Dennis or what republicans were up to in Colombia.

If it has a deep and settled feeling that Republicans are trouble and that things are always going to be messy, then it will not be happy to settle terms with them.

I don't believe, in this sense, that the murder of Denis Donaldson materially changes anything. I believe that the Northern Bank robbery was the last straw. Even if you find out that it wasn't your son that stole your car this Friday night, you're still likely to likely to give him another cuff in the ear for all the times he did.

If You Ask Me Archive