The SDLP leader Mr Mark Durkan has predicted that his party will withstand the pressure from Sinn Féin and emerge as the largest nationalist grouping after the Assembly elections.
The SDLP is running 36 candidates in the election, contesting all 18 constituencies. The SDLP won 24 seats in the Assembly 1998 election against 18 seats for Sinn Féin, although for the first time, Sinn Féin won more first preference votes in the 2001 Westminster and council elections.
Mr Durkan insisted the SDLP would still hold more seats than its nationalist rivals when the Assembly votes are counted at the end of November. "We are going to come out of this election for the first time in history with an Assembly member in every one of the constituencies," he said.
"And that's just for starters, that is going to be our baseline," he said in Belfast yesterday where the party's 36 candidates presented themselves in front of the press. Mr Durkan portrayed the election as a contest: "between those who wish to turn the clock back and those who want to take the people forward".
He said people were fed up with the soap-opera of countless, fruitless meetings, and referring to the unsuccessful attempts to restore devolution, added that in terms of the political process it was "not so much an Ireland of equals as an Ireland of sequels".
Mr Durkan believed voters would maintain faith in his party because "in this election the people will see their way past the politics of false promise, false hope and false hype.
"People know there is nothing false in what the SDLP says or does. No spin, no stunts - only substance," he added.
The Alliance leader, Mr David Ford also introduced his party's 21 candidates at a Belfast press conference yesterday, stressing that Alliance offered an alternative to "tribal politics".
Mr Ford said he was facing into the election with confidence, notwithstanding concerns that he could lose his South Antrim seat. "I do not intend to lose my seat and I do not believe the people of South Antrim will take my seat from me." Mr Ford complained that in recent months, the political process was "hijacked by the governments' men in grey suits and handed to the men in balaclavas and bowler hats - they have failed us".
He believed that the four main parties would suffer because of voter apathy and disillusionment with the failure to drive politics forward. "I do not think Alliance voters will suffer from apathy. There will be apathy among the people who feel the four larger parties have failed Northern Ireland," added Mr Ford.
He deplored the continuation of republican and loyalist paramilitary violence, notwithstanding the improvements since Good Friday 1998. "The issue now is not whether the so-called war is over, but whether paramilitary groups have given up violence and intimidation in all their forms," he said.
