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MARTIN MCGUINNESS HAS announced that he is stepping away from politics and will not run in the upcoming elections in Northern Ireland.
Confirming his decision tonight, the Sinn Féin MLA said the crisis in the Assembly and his current ill-health sped up his planned timeframe for retirement.
He noted that he was not “physically able” to continue in his current role.
“Last year, Gerry Adams and I confirmed that we had a plan in place for transition to a new leadership. For my part, it was my intention to step aside in May this year which would have marked 10 years since I entered government with Ian Paisley as joint leader of the northern executive,” he explained.
Unfortunately, my health and the current crisis have overtaken this timeframe and I am stepping down from my role to make way for a new leader of Sinn Féin in the North.
The outgoing Deputy First Minister resigned his position on 9 January over the ongoing ‘cash for ash’ scandal which has embroiled the DUP leader Arlene Foster.
From that day, the two largest parties in the Assembly – Sinn Féin and the DUP – had seven days to reach a deal to save the power-sharing executive. The deadline of 5pm, Monday was not met as Sinn Féin failed to nominate a replacement Deputy First Minister.
Elections were subsequently called by Secretary of State James Brokenshire for Thursday, 2 March.
Today, McGuinness said he had worked “tirelessly” over the past decade to make power-sharing a success.
“After long and careful consideration, I have decided that it is time for a new generation of republicans to lead us into this election and the negotiations that will follow,” he added.
On what he described as his “obvious health issues”, he said, “I want to be open and honest with my friends and colleagues in Sinn Féin, with the electorate of Foyle and with the wider community beyond my own constituency.
I also want to be fair to my family and to the teams of carers who are doing their best to provide me with the treatment I now require to deal with this very serious medical condition which I am very determined to overcome.
“Unfortunately, I am not physically able to continue in my current role and have therefore decided to make way for a new leader.
“This election is the right time for me to move aside so I will not seek re-election to the Assembly.”
The future
Contenders for the now-vacant role of leader of Sinn Féin in the North include Tyrone’s Michelle O’Neill and Armagh’s Conor Murphy.
Addressing the party’s future, McGuinness spoke about its “constant development, renewal and evolution”.
“Our struggle for freedom and equality stretches back to the United Ireland movement of the 1790s. I am deeply proud of the democratic influences that Ulster Presbyterianism contributed to the Irish republican tradition,” he said in a statement.
It remains my own personal and political ambition to break the link with Britain and to unite all who share this island under the common banner of Irish men and women.
“I am deeply proud of the generation of Irish republicans that came before us. A generation that kept the vision of freedom alive through the difficult post-partition era when they faced unrelenting repression and persecution from the Ulster Unionist Party in an apartheid Orange state.
“I have been privileged to be part of the generation that broke that apartheid state apart and to have been part of a Sinn Féin leadership that delivered peace and radical change.
There are more republicans today than at any time in my generation.
“I look across the party north and south and see energy, determination, talent and potential new leaders emerging who, I am confident, will deliver equality, respect and Irish unity.”
He said a new leader will now bring Sinn Féin into the elections and what will be fraught Assembly negotiations.
Reaction
A flurry of statements have been made in the wake of McGuinness making his decision public with Gerry Adams leading the tributes.
“I want to express my heartfelt thanks to Martin McGuinness. He and I first met over 45 years ago behind the barricades in Free Derry and we have been friends and comrades since that time,” he said.
I also want to thank Bernie and the entire McGuinness family for the support they have given to Martin over many years and for allowing him to become the leader, the patriot, the peacemaker and poet that he is.
Referring to his health, the Sinn Féin president revealed he was also “shocked when we saw his appearance recently”.
“Thank God he is looking a lot better since then and responding well to the treatment he is receiving. However, he does need to take time out to get better for himself, for his family and for our struggle.
“As we now know he won’t be standing in the Assembly election. That means we have to ensure that the election works for all of the people of the North and that we succeed in building on the progress that has been made since the Good Friday Agreement.
“Martin has said he wants to come back and be part of the process to end partition, build reconciliation, unite our people and achieve Irish unity. So on behalf of Sinn Féin and republicans everywhere I want to send him our best wishes. Give him the space to get better and increase our efforts so that when he returns the process of change has advanced.”
Taoiseach Enda Kenny said that he was sorry to learn that Martin McGuinness would not be contesting the next election because of poor health, but that he was sure McGuinness remains “firmly committed to delivering a peaceful and prosperous society for all of the people of Northern Ireland”.
While Martin and I may not always have seen eye-to-eye on every issue, I readily acknowledge the remarkable political journey that he has undertaken.
“I have appreciated working closely with Martin in recent years, including in particular in the work of the North South Ministerial Council.”
I wish Martin and his family well for the future and I hope that his health will now be his absolute priority in the time ahead.
Foreign Affairs Minister Charlie Flanagan also paid tribute to his “unstinting personal efforts to secure the stability of the power-sharing institutions”.
“Through word and deed, Martin sought to reach out to those who – for understandable reasons – would have regarded his past with fear, anger and suspicion,” he added.
Flanagan said people would meet McGuinness’s announcement with “an equal measure of understanding and disappointment”.
“While those of us who have worked directly with Martin will wish him and his family well for the future, we will also miss his positive contribution to political discourse on this island.
“Martin and I come from very different, and indeed mutually critical, political traditions. Yet, in the two and a half years that I worked directly with Martin, I experienced a political leader who was determined to make the future of Northern Ireland, and its people, so much better than its past.
“I hope that Martin’s political legacy – of a resilient and generous commitment to the interlocking institutions of the Good Friday Agreement – will encourage all of Northern Ireland’s political parties to emulate his efforts to consolidate partnership government.”
Fianna Fáil’s Micheál Martin called his political colleague a “constructive force” in trying to make the Good Friday Agreement institutions work, pointing to his “political pragmatism”.
I have always wondered if you have a massive big bathroom made completely from marble and gold does your shïte still smell?
Because this stinks to hell.
I’m sure that guy playin golf if from Cavan.
Painted horse. So tacky. I’m a unicorn man myself – more classy
Saddam, Gaddafi now this character – power corrupts etc.
Meanwhile back in Ireland we reward corrupt politicians with pensions much greater than the president of Ukraine’s salary. Wonder what the world would have thought if we had ousted Haughey and gone up to have a look round Kinsealy. Just googled Haughey’s house and Yanokovich has a long way to go before he reaches Irish standards.
Does anyone know if this is his private house or his state residence?
And don’t forget Haugheys ‘private island’ !!
I agree, but poor Enda I hope hasn’t a pad like this.
This also happened when Slobodan Mecockyebitch fled Serbia.
I don’t think he fled, wasn’t he arrested?
Petr, where have you been? So what do you think of this big house? It’s funny how you socialists end up living in big houses.
Btw, I see that your socialist paradise in Venezuela was all a mirage. Any thoughts on all of this?
@ Kenneth Sheehy: You live in a delusionary world, but I must admit that the banking world who have stolen billions upon billions from me and you ,our children and our children’s children and have gotten away scot free after manipulating the labor index etc are really thankful to people like you. In the US more and more hard working people are losing their jobs, houses and are being forced to take their children out of college . Peoples anger has being now being diverted to other governments world wide instead of clearing up our own total financial mess. I have gathered that you do not like to hear any alternative views to your own , but please let your defensive(fear) barrier down for 5 minutes and look at following link.
All wars are bankers wars : http://thegic.org/video/all-wars-are-bankers-wars
Sorry Libor index,
Padraic, you live in Russia so how did the banks steal money from you? And you say billions. So you were a billionaire? Please tell me how you came into this fortune?
Should the US government now also not be overthrown ?? If you have children this should worry you. NY Times: Afghan Opium Kingpin On CIA Payroll
A bombshell article in today’s edition of the New York Times lifts the lid on how the brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, a suspected kingpin of the country’s booming opium trade, has been on the CIA payroll for the past eight years. However, the article serves as little more than a whitewash because it fails to address the fact that one of the primary reasons behind the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan was the agenda to reinstate the Golden Crescent drug trade.
“The agency pays (Ahmed Wali) Karzai for a variety of services, including helping to recruit an Afghan paramilitary force that operates at the C.I.A.’s direction in and around the southern city of Kandahar, Mr. Karzai’s home,” reports the Times.
An October 2008 report from the Times reveals how, after security forces discovered a huge tractor-trailer full of heroin outside Kandahar in 2004, “Before long, the commander, Habibullah Jan, received a telephone call from Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of President Hamid Karzai, asking him to release the vehicle and the drugs.”
In 2006, following the discovery of another cache of heroin, “United States investigators told other American officials that they had discovered links between the drug shipment and a bodyguard believed to be an intermediary for Ahmed Wali Karzai.”
The Times article out today also discusses how the CIA uses Karzai as a go-between between the Americans and the Taliban. He is also directly implicated in the manufacturing of phony ballots and polling stations that were attributed to the President’s disputed election victory.
“If it looks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck,” the American officer said of Mr. Karzai. “Our assumption is that he’s benefiting from the drug trade.”
Officials quoted by The Times described Karzai as a Mafia-like figure who expanded his influence over the drug trade with the aid of U.S. efforts to eliminate his competitors.
[efoods]
The Afghan opium trade has exploded since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, following a lull after the Taliban had imposed a crackdown. According to the U.N., the drug trade is now worth $65 billion. Afghanistan produces 92 per cent of the world’s opium, with the equivalent of 3,500 tonnes leaving the country each year. Other figures put the number far higher, at around 6,100 tonnes a year.
The New York Times exposé pins the blame on Karzai, but fails to explain that one of the primary reasons behind the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan was the United States’ agenda to restore, not eradicate, the drug trade.
Before the invasion, the Taliban collaborated closely with the U.N. to reduce opium production down to just 185 tonnes, a figure at least 2000% below current levels. The notion that the “Taliban benefits from the drug trade” and that the U.S. is trying to stop it, as both Bush and Obama claimed, is the complete opposite of what is actually happening.
As Professor Michel Chossudovsky has highlighted in a series of essays, the explosion of opium production after the invasion was about the CIA’s drive to restore the lucrative Golden Crescent opium trade that was in place during the time when the Agency were funding the Mujahideen rebels to fight the Soviets, and flood the streets of America and Britain with cheap heroin, destroying lives while making obscene profits.
Heroin re exploded onto the streets after the invasion I have always had my doubts about the official reason for going into Afghanistan
You mean 9/11 Glen? The training camps all training fighters to attack thr West
Oh ok
Truth hurts
Wow that’s amazing, the people of the Ukraine can now get back to growing poppies again and restart the heroin production ….. yawn
James
What’s your take on the heroin situation you do have an opinion I’m assuming you have all the facts
James
Explain this to me how come heroin production jumped from less than 10% to over 90% when Afghanistan was invaded
HSBC have being fined a few billion Dollars for instance because they knowingly dealt with money from Jihadist terrorists, Mexican drug cartels etc, etc, and fines for manipulating the libor index. A small fraction of the money they stole from investors, and in the last instance from the taxpayer. Possible criminal charges ? Emphases of course on the word “Possible”. Noteworthy here is the fact that the vast amounts of money in the form of bonuses, etc that individual traders have walked away with will never be recuperated .
Goldman Sachs for instance used a double strategy in 2007. Firstly by misleading investors over the quality of the mortgage backed securities which it sold, and secondly by betting against them. A win , win situation. In 2007 Goldman earned a net profit of 11.4 billion dollars (a record sum) while its top 5 executives split 322 million among themselves (also a record)
In comparison : HO CHI MINH CITY, Nov 15 — A Vietnam court sentenced two former executives to death in a fraud trial, underscoring the government’s efforts to clamp down on corporate corruption while cleaning up its banking system.
I don’t advocate the latter of course, but just to show the difference in attitude. In Vietnam you get the death sentence and at Goldman you give yourself a 65 million bonus. At Goldman Sachs, although it underwrote billions of dollars of mortgage securities, parallel to this, a small group of traders were given the assignment to organize a well-timed proprietary bet that the housing bubble would collapse and the securities would rapidly loose value. They won of course ( in both cases) This is similar to selling somebody a sick horse, and then rushing off to the betting shop to bet the horse loses the race .Message is: We need to look closer to home instead of allowing our attention to be diverted to foreign ports.
That sure is an interesting story you have managed to put forward Padraic. However what you have just posted is nothing more than a copy and paste word-for-word hack job from this website:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/ny-times-afghan-opium-kingpin-on-cia-payroll.html
That site is run by Alex Jones. At the beginning of the month you told me that you have never heard of him:
http://www.thejournal.ie/al-qaeda-1291191-Feb2014/#comments
Yet on this article and the one on the Syrian rebels you have posted links to his website:
http://www.thejournal.ie/syria-rebels-guide-1299301-Feb2014/#comments
Here is a small clip of Alex (the person who you keep directing people to) in full on action:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhvaI07jmkA
Why do you keep linking content from that deranged lunatic?
I have also checked that link that you posted:
http://thegic.org/video/all-wars-are-bankers-wars
And the person who wrote it is Michael Rivero, who worked for none other than, you guessed it, Alex Jones.
Here is the ACTUAL article from the New York times and not the train wreck of conspiracy nonsense that can be found over at prison planet:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/28/world/asia/28intel.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
And lastly yes, Ahmed Wali Karzai did (or maybe he even still does) work with the CIA, yet to say he somehow works for them and cultivates and sells heroin is laughable considering you have (yet again on this site) given no evidence to back up your claims.
Alex Jones has been outed as a disinfo agent and probably works for the same people he is warning about
He tells you to do your own research and that is about the only honest thing he says he is a fraud
But the fact still remains that heroin production has increased since the invasion
Ouch!
Game, set and match to Liam… :-)
T@ Liam I worry about the world in which my children will grow up in, You not ? ::t :The 2001 bombing and invasion of Afghanistan has been presented to World public opinion as a “Just War”, a war directed against the Taliban and Al Qaeda, a war to eliminate “Islamic terrorism” and instate Western style democracy. The economic dimensions of the “Global War on Terrorism” (GWOT) are rarely mentioned. The post 9/11 “counter-terrorism campaign” has served to obfuscate the real objectives of the US-NATO war.
The war on Afghanistan is part of a profit driven agenda: a war of economic conquest and plunder, ”a resource war”.
While Afghanistan is acknowledged as a strategic hub in Central Asia, bordering on the former Soviet Union, China and Iran, at the crossroads of pipeline routes and major oil and gas reserves, its huge mineral wealth as well as its untapped natural gas reserves have remained, until June 2010, totally unknown to the American public.
According to a joint report by the Pentagon, the US Geological Survey (USGS) and USAID, Afghanistan is now said to possess “previously unknown” and untapped mineral reserves, estimated authoritatively to be of the order of one trillion dollars (New York Times, U.S. Identifies Vast Mineral Riches in Afghanistan – NYTimes.com, June 14, 2010, See also BBC, 14 June 2010). deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.
Afghanistan is a land bridge. The 2001 U.S. led invasion and occupation of Afghanistan has been anallised by critics of US foreign policy as a means to securing control over the strategic trans-Afghan transport corridor which links the Caspian sea basin to the Arabian sea.
Several trans-Afghan oil and gas pipeline projects have been contemplated including the planned $8.0 billion TAPI pipeline project (Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India) of 1900 km., which would transport Turkmen natural gas across Afghanistan in what is described as a “crucial transit corridor”. (See Gary Olson, Afghanistan has never been the ‘good and necessary’ war; it’s about control of oil, The Morning Call, October 1, 2009). Military escalation under the extended Af-Pak war bears a relationship to TAPI. Turkmenistan possesses third largest natural gas reserves after Russia and Iran. Strategic control over the transport routes out of Turkmenistan have been part of Washington’s agenda since the collapse of the Soviet union in 1991.
Note
1. The Golden Crescent trade in opiates constitutes, at present, the centerpiece of Afghanistan’s export economy. The heroin trade, instated at the outset of the Soviet-Afghan war in 1979 and protected by the CIA, generates cash earnings in Western markets in excess of $200 billion dollars a year. Since the 2001 invasion, narcotics production in Afghanistan has increased more than 35 times. In 2009, opium production stood at 6900 tons, compared to less than 200 tons in 2001. In this regard, the multibillion dollar earnings resulting from the Afghan opium production largely occur outside Afghanistan. According to United Nations data, the revenues of the drug trade accruing to the local economy are of the order of 2-3 billion annually. In contrast with the Worldwide sales of heroin resulting from the trade in Afghan opiates, in excess of $200 billion. (See Michel Chossudovsky, America’s War on Terrorism”, Global Research, Montreal, 2005)
Where do you work Padraic?
Unfortunately as soon as you start referencing infowars and global research you’ve lost a huge amount of credibility in the eyes of most rational people.
Note: UN data
@Jeremy Usborne: its not a question of where I work or do not work. I have two small children and worry about the world in which they will grow up. Can you please dispel for me the points I have made ,one for one ,Thank you.
Are you related to Jim Corr?
@ Tom Brennan : Counter evidence please that the CIA are not totally involved in the drug trade. I have offered my version . and now you. Please confirm for me that they are not. Ok
It’s unreal tbh, you present people with cold hard facts, actual quotes and they simply don’t believe because it’s not on their 24 hour news channel. Simple.
Perhaps you should google “russell’s teapot” Padraic.
It would upset thier lives and beliefs
Liam nicely done. But……
Is it really worth the hassle. Its a crack pot on the journal. Hardly an out of the ordinary occurrence is it.
Padraic, you are spewing nonsense!
Interesting Facebook profile he has.
Jeremy, who? Padraic?
@ James – I think it is worth the hassle. Although many people can see the nonsense for what it is when coming from people like Padraic and people like him, some people can fall for it.
I’ve been on the Journal for about two years now and back then the site didn’t really suffer from an onslaught of crack pots.
@ Padraic – So you decided to copy and paste (yet again) from someone. This time being Michel Chossudovsky. The only difference between him and Jones is that Chossudovsky has the title professor.
But the man is no less of a nut job. Chossudovsky states that the U.S. has weapons that can start climate change and saying that the holocaust didn’t happen.
http://www.westernstandard.ca/website/article.php?id=1998&start=1
http://www.wordsandwar.com/2009/04/20/antisemite-academic-in-ottawa-eh/#more-1926
Again, just like yourself, not credible.
Padraic. You keep banging on about how the banks stole your children future but yet you say Russia is debt free. And you have told us on many occasions that you live and work in Russia so how have the banks stolen your kids future? I mean if you are in a Debt free Russia then the banks have taken nothing from you or your kids or are you one of these people that if someone is cut ten thousand miles away you bleed too?
Good man Liam with the information, you really showed Padraig up huh?(LOL) , the ol’ conspiracy theorist nutjob shiite, but if you take away the personalities (Alex Jones truly is a wackjob) behind it is cold hard facts, quotes from the people themselves, but its easier not to have to swallow this and just go with the old mainstream media mantra aint it.
Sure I may input some more. In the early years of the Afghanistan war, coalition policy included widespread forced eradication. In June 2009, however, Barack Obama’s administration announced that U.S. and other international forces would no longer conduct eradication operations, on which the late Richard Holbrooke said the United States had “wasted hundreds of millions of dollars.”The sensible motivation for this reversal was recognition that eradication produced unintended consequences. Pulling up a farmer’s opium crop could generate ill will, perhaps enough to produce a new recruit for the insurgency. It was also geographically inconvenient. Afghanistan is a horrendously complicated place, but to oversimplify, two-thirds of the country (roughly 27 of 34 provinces) has been nearly poppy-free and relatively stable for a few years. The remaining third — in particular Helmand and Kandahar provinces — is rife with both poppies and insurgents. Eradication in those areas has a minimal and temporary effect on the drug trade, at most pushing production to the next valley or district. And angering farmers where Taliban recruiters prowl seemed like a gift to the enemy. So the Obama administration swore off direct support of eradication, though the governors of some Afghan provinces continue to pursue their own eradication programs.
Padraic, I did and it’s sheer rubbish!
Nope I don’t read things not fact based. Bitter man. I feel for yiur children not because of this dept bht because they are exposed to such hate bile and bitterness
Pretty shabby compared to Buckingham Palace.
Pretty extravagant compared to the average home in Ukraine! That’s what matters here Derek! You are still trying to turn the attention away from this guy.
His salary as president of Ukraine $100,000 and enda kennys as taoiseach is????
FFS Declan. His published salary is 100k, but it’s Ukraine! Did ye look at the photos???? Think a published 100k salary pays for that??? It’s many many multiples of that.
OK compare enda Kenny and David Cameron??
BTW that place was his state residence not private residence
What are you getting at?
Don’t like the taoiseach?
Do something about it then.
@Declan it was his private residence and Ukraine parliament have voted to confiscate it. So no, it’s not a state residence.
And that is 20 times average salary. But yanukovic is a billionaire and hia son too .
Options for him are pretty limited. He will most likely live a reclusive life in Russia or spend his days in a dank Ukrainian jail.
Leaders in Belarus and North Korea take note
Fair play to them for not looting the place.
The guy also had bottles of vodka with his picture on them, talk about been self indulgent nut job!
I seen some pictures yesterday and one of them was a hovercraft , you know you’re rich when you you have a hovercraft
he’s got good taste. Too bad he’ll never see it again. Crook.
Red thumbs? I doubt you understand the references. Do a bit of research.
I love how, the pictures were posted on imgur, were used by AFP for reporting and that article is on the journal… Like half the journal staff probably saw them on imgur before the AFP write up… Could have beaten them to it.
have your say