Rejectionist republicanism once again reared its ugly head this weekend as Sinn Fein "justice" spokesman Gerry Kelly said his party rejected the proposals made by the DUP to devolve policing and justice powers to the Northern Ireland Assembly.

The DUP proposal would have seen policing and justice devolved to the Northern Ireland executive and assembly, with the Policing & Justice minister being elected based on a weighted cross-community vote.

Sinn Fein have been calling for the devolution of justice and policing powers "to ensure policing is accountable" to the people of Northern Ireland since the Good Friday Agreement way back when. As recently as 8th December Gerry Adams said "we need local accountability and control of our policing and justice structures." Now that the DUP have come up with a plan that would allow this to happen while assuaging Unionist fears about Sinn Fein using such a position to destroy effective policing, Sinn Fein's intransigence seems destined to destroy this unprecedented opportunity.

So what’s the problem? Such a weighted cross-community vote would probably exclude the extremes (ie the DUP and Sinn Fein) from holding the post, leaving it with one of the moderate parties. Nothing in the letter of the law would actually prohibit this though, so if either the DUP or Sinn Fein could demonstrate to the other parties that they could take on the task responsibly then it's not without the realms of possibility. The problem, of course, is that Sinn Fein will be unable to do this as long as they insist on bullshitting on about "securocrats" and "heavy-handedness" and "political policing" every time the PSNI grow enough balls to actually take action against a republican criminal.

So what do Sinn Fein want: locally accountable policing, or an opportunity for Sinn Fein to take control of the police service for their own ends?