The British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, has made a barely veiled appeal to Northern Ireland voters to maintain their faith in the Belfast Agreement by urging them to "choose the future not the past".
As Northern voters prepare to go to the polls tomorrow, Mr Blair said in London the people of Northern Ireland must "play their part" in their own future by turning out in strength to vote tomorrow.
He avoided specifically calling for voters to favour pro-agreement parties, but it was implicit in his remarks when speaking at a news conference at Lancaster House in London after the conclusion of yesterday's Anglo-French summit. "If people vote on election day in Northern Ireland they make a choice. If they don't vote, if they stay at home, they make a choice and I hope people choose the future not the past, but that's a decision for them," Mr Blair said.
"The decision now is for the people of Northern Ireland and they are going to have to decide in a fundamental way whether Northern Ireland today is a better place than it was six, seven, 10 years ago, and if it is, they are going to have to come and vote for it," he added.
"This is something the politicians can't do on their own, the people have got to play their part now and I just hope people bear in mind whatever frustrations and difficulties there are, that Northern Ireland actually, as everybody really knows, is in far better shape than it was a decade ago. That is only because people had the courage to come together and to make an agreement," said Mr Blair.
Meanwhile, the former SDLP leader, Mr John Hume, urged people who had supported the party for the last 30 years to stick with the SDLP. "Without that strength and support we would not have made the progress that we have made, particularly in the peace process and in the development of the North through substantial inward investment," he said. "I am asking the people of Northern Ireland to come and stand shoulder to shoulder with us on Wednesday so we can keep building the new North and the new Ireland together," said Mr Hume.
Prof Monica McWilliams of the Women's Coalition criticised Sinn Féin and the Ulster Unionists for calling on voters respectively to first support nationalist and unionist candidates and then transfer on to pro-agreement candidates.
"I am deeply concerned at pro-agreement parties urging people to retreat back into sectarian trenches," she said. "Voters should cast their votes for pro-agreement parties and not be afraid of crossing the community divide to maximise support for the agreement."
Follow the latest developments on ireland.com's special Assembly Election website. It is free to access at: www.ireland.com/focus/nielection/
