By Michele Canning Smith
SINN Fein has five days to come up with five names of councillors who will take their seats on Strabane's District Policing Partnership - making it one of the last to nominate in the North.
The party yesterday remained tight lipped over the identity of the five councillors it will nominate to the local policing body, however they will have to be named at a special meeting of Strabane Council on Tuesday night, December 4.
Under the d'Hondt system, Sinn Fein, as the largest bloc on Strabane Council, can take five seats on the DPP. The party has said it will take those five seats.
Though the party line is that the issue has been resolved in several public debates and meetings in Sinn Fein's widest ever consultation with its grass roots supporters and members, in some areas, the issue of policing is still so contentious that prospective members of the DPP tend to tread lightly.
The nomination of the five will come right down to the wire, with the party saying the names will only be revealed on Tuesday night - the absolute deadline for party nominations.
Strabane Council has placed the issue on the agenda of a special meeting. There has been speculation that only two of the eight Strabane councillors have, as of today, put themselves forward for nomination. It is safe to assume that one of those is Ivan Barr, party stalwart. In a recent interview with the Strabane Chronicle last month, he said he would consider putting himself forward for nomination.
The suggestion is now that the party is struggling to fill the other three seats - although that claim has been rubbished by the leader of the council grouping and current Council Chairman Gerard Foley.
Councillors contacted by the Strabane Chronicle were giving nothing away, saying merely that the five will be named on Tuesday night.
Gerard Foley stressed that the party has said it will take five seats on the DPP and the names of those individuals will be made known on Tuesday night.
December 4th is the deadline for nominations for political representatives onto DPPs. It is understood that each of the other 25 Council areas in the North has named its members, with many having already attended a DPP meeting, including Sinn Fein councillors in Omagh, Dungannon and Magherafelt.
Derg councillor Charlie McHugh, a fierce critic of the PSNI, said he had no comment to make on the issue other than his party will name its nominees on Tuesday.
Just last week five Sinn Fein members from Omagh District Council took their seats on the DPP, and though there had been some sense of possible trouble on the days leading up to the public meeting the event passed off without a hitch, councillors Declan McAleer, Sean Begley, Sean Clarke, Marty McColgan and Frankie Donnelly, participated fully in the meeting.
