Power-sharing Executive
After the Assembly elections, negotiations between the pro-White Paper parties on the formation of a "power-sharing Executive" began. The main concerns were internment, policing and the question of a Council of Ireland.
On 21 November, agreement was reached on a voluntary coalition of pro-agreement parties (unlike the provisions of the Belfast Agreement, which establishes the D'Hondt method for the election of Ministers, proportionally to the main parties in the Assembly). Prominent members of the Executive included former Unionist Prime Minister Brian Faulkner as Chief Executive, SDLP leader Gerry Fitt as Deputy Chief Executive, future Nobel Laureate and SDLP leader John Hume as Minister for Commerce and leader of the Alliance Party Oliver Napier as Legal Minister and head of the Office of Law Reform. The UUP was deeply divided – its Standing Committee voted to participate in the executive by a margin of only 132 to 105.
Read more about this topic: Sunningdale Agreement
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“To me the sole hope of human salvation lies in teaching Man to regard himself as an experiment in the realization of God, to regard his hands as God’s hand, his brain as God’s brain, his purpose as God’s purpose. He must regard God as a helpless Longing, which longed him into existence by its desperate need for an executive organ.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)