The so-called peace process has been a gigantic fraud and ultimately a failure ever since the signing of the Good Friday agreement 10 years ago. Four years after the guns had (almost) been silenced in the 1994 ceasefires, the politicians of the North signed up to a deal that institutionalised sectarian division in its political and administrative structures. A decade later, the moderates that led the respective communities in 1998 have been largely erased off the political map. The hardliners, on one side a gang of bloodthirsty terrorists & marxists, and on the other a narrow fundamentalist religious grouping, are now in control and despite all the pr efforts of the spindoctors and vested interests, the ugly reality is that sectarian division is now worse in Northern Ireland than it was in 1998. Bertie Aherns legacy will in the long run be tainted by this failure.
