JEFFREY Donaldson is set to announce a fresh bid to become the third DUP leader in a month.
The Lagan Valley MP is not expected to face opposition after he took on Edwin Poots for the leadership role last month.
Poots resigned from the DUP leadership last week after just 21 days in the role. He took over as Stormont's former first minister Arlene Foster stepped away from leading the party.
Nominations for the role opened on Saturday and are set to close tomorrow.
Poots decision to step down from the DUP leadership was prompted by his decision to press ahead with reconstituting the Stormont Executive alongside Sinn Fein, despite a significant majority of his MPs and MLAs being vociferously opposed to the move.
First Minister Paul Givan (below) remains in post. It is understood that he has been urged to resign when a new leader is in place.
READ MORE: Paul Givan will be expected to resign amid DUP leadership chaos
Once Givan resigns, Deputy First Minister Michelle O’Neill will also be removed from her post, triggering a seven-day period during which new officeholders must be nominated or a fresh Assembly election will be called.
Sinn Fein Finance Minister Conor Murphy said his party has no demands before renominating a Deputy First Minister.
There is speculation the DUP may demand action from the UK Government over the Northern Ireland Protocol before nominating a new First Minister.
Murphy described the DUP as “being at a crossroads”.
“They have to decide whether they want to be in a working Executive with the rest of us on the basis that they agreed to as a party – they signed up to this – or they want to frustrate things and prevent things, and create a very difficult working arrangement and ultimately threaten the future of the institutions,” he told BBC Radio Ulster.
“We have a lot to be getting on with, we have a pandemic that is still active, we need to see that out, we have huge economic challenges ahead of us, we have public services that have been starved by years of austerity cuts and we have a responsibility on behalf of the whole of society to deliver on these issues.”
Murphy denied his party had made additional demands over Irish language legislation last week to nominate O’Neill (below) as Deputy First Minister.
He said the party was “staying faithful” to the New Decade New Approach deal.
“We have said we are not pushing for anything else, we want to just see the things that were agreed under NDNA implemented in the way they were agreed to,” he added.
Donaldson narrowly lost to Poots in the first leadership contest in the DUP’s history.
Chastened by that bruising campaign, the party hierarchy’s preference is for an uncontested appointment this time round, though it remains to be seen whether Donaldson will face any challengers.
During the last campaign, Donaldson vowed to quit as an MP in Westminster to return to the Assembly and take up the role of First Minister.
If that were to happen, it would mean a Westminster by-election in Lagan Valley, a seat held by Donaldson since 1997.
READ MORE: MP Sir Jeffrey Donaldson likely to succeed Edwin Poots as DUP leader
One possibility is that he could seek to replace Foster (below) as the MLA for Fermanagh and South Tyrone when she steps down.
However, with the DUP currently in such turmoil, there are doubts whether the party would want to voluntarily trigger a by-election in Lagan Valley any time soon.
Donaldson’s commanding 19,000-vote majority in Lagan Valley in the 2017 General Election was trimmed to 6000 votes at the 2019 poll following a surge in support for the Alliance Party.
Another option could see Donaldson wait until just before the next Assembly election, scheduled in May 2022, before he resigns his parliamentary seat.
In that scenario, he might appoint a temporary First Minister to fill the role in the interim.
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