Northern Ireland is witnessing on Saturday (7) what local analysts described as a seismic shift in the country. Sinn Féin, the former political wing of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), won the biggest share of the regional Assembly and thus became the main political force in the nation of 1.9 million people.
The weight of the announcement is given by the fact that the party is the first with a nationalist bias to gain control since the country was formed, 101 years ago, in 1921. Party leaders have already indicated the issue that should dominate local politics: they asked for a ” honest debate” on unification with the Republic of Ireland, Sinn Féin’s flagship.
With the poll about to be finalized, the party led by Michelle O’Neill won 27 seats, pushing the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) to second place, with 24 – the assembly has 90 seats, and the rest are distributed among smaller parties. .
O’Neill described the results as a turning point for politics and the people. “Today ushers in a new era that I believe presents all of us with an opportunity to reimagine relationships in this society based on equality and social justice,” he continued.
Sinn Féin won 29% of citizens’ first preference votes for Parliament — in the country, voters must nominate their main candidate and also sign reserve names — while the DUP won 21.3%, a drop of seven percentage points. regarding the 2017 election.
During the campaign, the legend, in a tactical way, did not insist on the Irish unification agenda, focusing on issues related to the cost of living and the growing waiting list in the health system, a strategy that seems to have had an effect at the polls.
Northern Ireland’s law, crafted after the historic Belfast Agreement – also known as the Good Friday Agreement – signed in 1998 to end fighting in the region, says the country is part of the United Kingdom and will not cease to be. it without the consent of the majority of the population. It adds that a vote must be held if the majority of society wished to join the Republic of Ireland.
The victory of Sinn Féin, of course, does not change the status of the region, as possible referendums would take years to structure and agree with the United Kingdom, but it has symbolic weight.
While the largest party has the right to nominate a candidate for prime minister — and O’Neill is the most highly-rated — the country’s mandatory sharing government requires that there be a minimum agreement with the DUP, so that the opposition nominates. for vice premier. Thus, training the Executive is a task that can take months.
Amendments made to the constitution in February to prevent a possible assembly collapse, as happened in 2017, give elected officials up to four six-week windows — 24 weeks in total, or six months — to consolidate a government. The ministries are distributed among the acronyms, according to the share of each one in the elections.
DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson said an agreement with Sinn Féin would be conditional on a full review of the controversial protocol that governs the country’s trade with the rest of the United Kingdom since leaving the European Union (EU) with Brexit. .
Asked by a BBC journalist whether she hoped to become the pioneering nationalist prime minister, O’Neill said only: “That’s what people said.”
Scottish Prime Minister Nicola Sturgeon, who is also leading a campaign for the country’s independence from the United Kingdom, was one of the first to congratulate Sinn Féin. On social media, she described the election result as “truly historic”.
Northern Ireland’s Secretary of State Brandon Lewis urged the parties to form a government as soon as possible. “The people of Northern Ireland deserve stable and accountable local government that addresses the issues that matter most to them,” he said.
