Protestant hard-liners delay crucial vote

BELFAST, Northern Ireland -- Protestant hard-liners succeeded Monday in delaying a crucial vote to save Northern Ireland's unity government but lost a court battle to cancel the ballot.

On Friday, the same hard-liners defeated Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble's bid to be elected to a new term as head of the provincial government, a verdict that threatened to topple the administration. Trimble needed a majority of votes from Protestant bloc in the Northern Ireland legislature, but fell one vote short.

The British government then maneuvered to hold a second vote, persuading the neutral Alliance Party -- which includes moderates from both sides of the political-religious divide -- to send some of its lawmakers temporarily into the Protestant voting bloc to outvote the hard-liners.

That new vote was scheduled for Monday, and Alliance leader David Ford conceded beforehand his party's move would be "a pantomime" necessary to return Trimble to power. But Ian Paisley's hard-line Democratic Unionist Party collected the required 30 signatures for a so-called "petition of concern," putting off the vote at least until today.

Lawyers acting for Paisley sought an injunction from Belfast High Court against Britain's decision to permit a second leadership vote in the legislature, from which Northern Ireland's four-party government must be drawn.

Justice Brian Kerr, however, ruled that Britain had wide discretion on how it managed the current crisis -- specifically about the timing of when it must dissolve the legislature and announce a date for a new Northern Ireland-wide election.

In danger of collapse

If a new first minister is not elected, the entire experiment in Protestant-Catholic cooperation is in danger of collapse. Although he lost the Protestant vote 30-29 on Friday, Trimble won unanimous support from the Catholic bloc and the neutral Alliance.

To return to office, Trimble must receive a majority of support from both sides of the house, while neutral votes have no bearing on the outcome. The current breakdown is 59 British Protestants, 43 Irish Catholics and Alliance's six neutral members. A tiny neutral party with two lawmakers, the Women's Coalition, on Friday transferred one each into the Catholic and Protestant blocs, the latter in a failed effort to give Trimble the edge.

Britain had billed Saturday as the deadline for Trimble to prevail. Paisley was hoping to force the legislature to be dissolved in favor of a new election, when he predicts his party will gain seats.

Even amid debate Monday about the propriety of Alliance's sudden conversion -- one Protestant hard-liner, Robert McCartney, denounced it as "a disgraceful piece of political shysterism" -- it appeared unlikely that Alliance's move could be blocked.

However, analysts cautioned that the longer this political confrontation dragged on, the greater the risk that Trimble would lose more votes within his own Ulster Unionist ranks.