Sinn Fein – Central News Hub

Sinn Fein scripts history

Sinn Fein is entitled to first minister post in Belfast for the first time since Northern Ireland was founded in 1921…reports Asian Lite News

Nationalist Sinn Fein has won the most seats in the Northern Ireland legislature for the first time in history, UK media reported on Saturday.

According to Sky News, Sinn Fein has won 27 seats in the 90-seat Assembly, pushing the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) with 24 seats into the second place and becoming the first nationalist party to take control of Northern Ireland’s legislature.

The broadcaster noted that the DUP had lost ground among unionists due to its reaction to Brexit and North Ireland trading arrangements. This split the vote between three unionist parties.

Ireland was separated into Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland by an act of the parliament in 1921. In 1922, Southern Ireland became the Irish Free State, which in turn became the independent Republic of Ireland in 1948. Northern Ireland remained part of the United Kingdom.

The historic win means Sinn Fein is entitled to the post of first minister in Belfast for the first time since Northern Ireland was founded as a Protestant-majority state in 1921.

“Today ushers in a new era,” Sinn Fein Vice President Michelle O’Neill said.

“Irrespective of religious, political or social backgrounds, my commitment is to make politics work,” she said.

O’Neill stressed that it was imperative for Northern Ireland’s politicians to now come together to form an Executive – the devolved government of Northern Ireland – next week. If none can be formed within six months, the administration will collapse, triggering a new election and more uncertainty.

“There is an urgency to restore an Executive and start putting money back in people’s pockets, to start to fix the health service. The people can’t wait,” she said.

“The people have spoken, and our job is now to turn up. I expect others to turn up also,” she told reporters, stressing her new government must tackle foremost a cost-of-living crisis, ahead of the debate about Irish unity.

Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, who is also leading a campaign to secede from the United Kingdom, was among the first to congratulate Sinn Fein in a Twitter post that hailed a “truly historic result”.

“There’s no doubt there are big fundamental questions being asked of the UK as a political entity right now,” Sturgeon said in an interview earlier on Saturday.

Once the political wing of the paramilitary IRA, Sinn Fein has won enough seats in the devolved legislature to nominate O’Neill as first minister – a century after Northern Ireland was carved out of the island of Ireland as a Protestant fiefdom under British rule.

Under a mandatory power-sharing system created by the 1998 peace agreement that ended decades of Catholic-Protestant conflict in Ireland, the jobs of first minister and deputy first minister are split between the biggest unionist party and the largest nationalist one.

Both posts must be filled for a government to function, but the DUP has suggested it might not serve under a Sinn Fein first minister. The DUP has also said it will refuse to join a new government unless there are major changes to post-Brexit border arrangements, known as the Northern Ireland Protocol.

Those post-Brexit rules, which took effect after Britain left the European Union, have imposed customs and border checks on some goods entering Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK. The arrangement was designed to keep an open border between Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland, a key pillar of the peace process.

But the protocol has angered many unionists, who maintain that the new checks have created a barrier between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK that undermines their British identity.

The leader of the once-dominant Ulster Unionist Party, which struggled in the election, said many voters were tired of “angry negative unionism”.

“It may take a while to change that psyche,” UUP chief Doug Beattie told reporters.

“It may well be a supertanker that has a large turning circle. But we need to do it.”

Katy Hayward, professor of political sociology at Queen’s University Belfast, said it was “extraordinary and highly significant to have a nationalist party holding the most seats in the assembly”.

Any referendum on Irish reunification was some way off, she said.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis is expected to meet the party leaders in Belfast on Monday. The parties will have 24 weeks to resolve their differences or face a new election.

England, Wales and Scotland also voted in local and regional elections on Thursday, punishing embattled Johnson’s scandal-mired Conservatives but without a landslide for the main opposition Labour party.

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NI elections could throw up uncertainty

The delicate balance could be endangered if as opinion polls are indicating Sinn Fein, the political arm of the anti-British separatist Irish Republican Army, now dormant but entirely defunct, wins more seats than the DUP in the Assembly, writes Ashis Ray

A cloud of uncertainty confronts Northern Ireland, one of the four constituents comprising the UK, as it goes to the polls to elect 90 members to its regional Assembly on May 5.

This, because Sinn Fein, a party identified as representing the minority Catholic community, is tipped to become the largest single party in the House, beating the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which historically enjoys the support of Protestants, the majority population in the region.

After decades of bad blood and violence between Protestants and Catholics, a historic peace accord arrived at Easter in 1998, known as the Good Friday Agreement, which ushered comparative reconciliation and calm in a part of Britain separated from the remainder of the British Isles by the Irish Sea and having a land border with the Catholic dominated Republic of Ireland to its south.

Protestant political parties fiercely loyal to the UK and their Catholic counterparts equally committed to independence from the UK and merger with the Republic of Ireland, accepted the principle of power sharing, with the position of First Minister going to the party with the highest number of seats in the Assembly; and that of Deputy First Minister allocated to the party with the second highest number of seats.

Thus far, the First Minister has been from the DUP and the Deputy First Minister from Sinn Fein.

The Belfast Telegraph on Friday published a LucidTalk survey, which forecast 26 per cent of votes for Sinn Fein and 20 per cent to the DUP.

A third pro-British, pro-Protestant party, the Ulster Unionist Party, could secure around 13 per cent of votes and the Traditional Unionist Voice, of the same genre, attracting 9 per cent. On the other side, a pro-Republic of Ireland, pro-Catholic force, the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), might muster around 11 per cent.

Sinn Féin’s election manifesto launch (Image: Twitter@moneillsf)

In effect, the Unionists as they are called could cumulatively obtain about 42 per cent of electoral support; while Sinn Fein and SDLP, labelled nationalists or republicans, could muster about 37 per cent. Both the Protestant and Catholic groups, though, lack coordination between themselves, thereby neither being able to reach a consensus within themselves on an First Minister candidate. So, the rule that the largest party in the Assembly is entitled to have the First Minister will apply.

“The DUP has repeatedly refused to say if it would accept filling the role of deputy first minister if pushed into second place,” reported the Guardian.

Indeed, if it resists nominating a person as Deputy First Minister, government formation would become virtually impossible. Such a state of affairs has in the past been a recipe for lawlessness. DUP’s core backers who remain uncompromisingly opposed to Sinn Fein find propping up a government led by Sinn Fein unacceptable.

It is assessed by analysts that DUP’s plummeted popularity has been caused by it endorsing UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal, which includes the Northern Ireland Protocol. This has cut adrift Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK as an economic entity so as to maintain the non-negotiable condition of an open border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland mandated in the Good Friday Agreement.

The Northern Irish people loyal to Britain are not only affronted by this economic estrangement, but their business are experiencing delays and distress from checks on movement of goods between Northern Ireland and mainland Britain and consequent shortages and a sharp increase in prices of essential items.

Launch of DUP’s Assembly Election manifesto. (Image: Twitter@duponline)

The campaign by parties who swear by the British union has been that if Sinn Fein emerges as the largest single party it will push for unification with the South, in an attempt to spread fear among voters allergic to such an idea. But the US, which brokered the Good Friday Agreement and is adamant about adherence to it, is unlikely to allow a change in the status quo.

President Joe Biden himself of Irish Catholic origin is likely to ensure Sinn Fein doesn’t rock the boat.

Meanwhile, one of the outcomes of the upcoming election could be the slight rise of the neutral Alliance party, which could command 16 per cent of votes, without, however, making a decisive difference to Northern Ireland’s age-old polarised politics.

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