Politicians trooped back to the Assembly at Stormont this week, their mild partisan sabre-rattling little more than a ritual greeting after the summer break. In its two and a half years of existence, power-sharing has, against all expectations, provided a considerable degree of political harmony, even though gunmen and bombers have not entirely vanished from the scene.rnMany predicted that this government of ancient foes, dominated by the loyalist Democratic Unionist Party and republican Sinn Fein, would produce a battle a day, yet the deal has so far proved surprisingly resilient. The funerals have practically stopped. Nearly all the guns and nearly all the paramilitary groups have gone. Most of the political action now takes place in the Assembly rather than on the streets.
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