Off the wire
• U.S. stocks tick up amid earnings reports  • Macedonian police catch 12 illegal migrants hiding in car  • Egypt's parliament approves gov't in confidence vote  • Jinan ranks China's most congested city  • KMT chair vows to adhere to "1992 Consensus"  • China dissatisfied with British comment on South China Sea  • Tanzanian authorities warn against smuggling of minerals  • Zambia set to host investment forum  • Pakistan's wanted criminal gang surrendered to army: spokesman  • 1st Ld Writethru: China's mainland population grows to 1.37 bln in 2015: survey  
You are here: 　 Home

Scottish National Party election manifesto makes no commitment to independence referendum

Xinhua, April 21, 2016 Adjust font size:

Scottish National Party (SNP) leader Nicola Sturgeon here on Wednesday said if there were to be another vote on Scotland's future, nationalists "first have to earn the right to propose it."

Sturgeon made the remarks while launching the SNP's manifesto for the Holyrood Scottish parliamentary elections on May 5, describing the policy package as her "job application" for the role of First Minister of Scotland.

She conceded it would be "wrong" to set a date for a second referendum on independence before a majority of Scots back the country leaving Britain, the online Scotsman newspaper reported.

The manifesto did not contain a specific commitment to hold a referendum on independence during the next parliament if the SNP is reelected.

Assuming the post of First Minister in November 2014 after the Scottish independence referendum, Sturgeon is leading the SNP in a Scottish election campaign for the first time. She unveiled the manifesto to an audience of some 1,400 attendees in Edinburgh on Wednesday.

She called on the Scottish people to give her a personal mandate to implement the SNP policies and make Scotland even better.

The manifesto pledges to increase National Health Service (NHS) funding by 500 million pounds (about 720 million U.S. dollars) more than inflation over the five-year course of the next parliament, described by Sturgeon as "part of a package of investment and reform to equip the NHS for the future."

An additional 750 million pounds would be spent over the next five years to close the gap between rich and poor pupils in Scotland, with most of that money going directly to head teachers, Sturgeon said.

The SNP also pledged to bring forward legislation to cut emissions by 50 percent by 2020 and to spend nearly 20 billion pounds "improving and modernizing our national infrastructure."

The SNP are projected to win an even greater majority of the total 129 seats in Scottish parliament in the upcoming May election than the 69 seats they won in 2011.

Winning the Scottish parliamentary election in 2007 for the first time, the SNP formed its first majority government in the region after the 2011 parliamentary election.

Meanwhile, the SNP garnered an historic landslide of 56 seats out of 59 seats for Scotland in the British general election in May 2015, a sharp increase from only six seats at Westminster British parliament in the 2010 general election.

The SNP-led pro-independence Yes campaign gained 45 percent support in the Scottish Independence referendum held on Sept. 18, 2014, against the No campaign's 55 percent in the historic poll with a turnout of 85 percent and more than 3.6 million people across Scotland casting their votes. (1 pound = 1.44 U.S. dollars) Enditem