2024-10-20 23:47:00
Him Sinn Fein, former political arm of the now inactive IRAI’ve never been this close to you before. celebrate the long-awaited referendum on reunification. In the last decade they have achieved the unthinkable. The nationalists They stormed Dublin parliament in 2020 put an end to the dominant bipartisanship of the last century. And they made history at the Belfast assembly two years later by becoming, for the first time, the party with the most votes since the partition of the island 103 years ago. But A chain of scandals now threatens his mission.
The crisis is raising serious questions about the political survival of the country itself. Mary Lou McDonald, the Dubliner personally chosen by the former Sinn Féin leader, the historian Gerry Adams, bring the party with Northern Irish roots from the periphery to power in the Republic of Ireland. Until recently it was one of the most popular policies. but now They accuse him of deliberately lying to Parliament about a chain of scandals that include letters of recommendation for a pedophile press chief, accusations of censorship and crimes, mass resignations and a senator who harasses teenagers with more than inappropriate text messages.
McDonald tries to regain control of the narrative. But his appearance last Tuesday in Dáil Éireann, the lower house of parliament in Dublin, left more questions than answers. Lying to Parliament is grounds for resignation. You know it well Boris Johnson who eventually left Downing Street after lying to Westminster on Partygate, illegal parties organized during a pandemic.
Everything indicates it Simon Harris, who earlier this year became, at 37, the youngest prime minister in the history of the Republic of Ireland He wants to take advantage of his political rival’s crisis to call early elections. The announcement, according to rumors, could take place before Halloween. Analysts have nicknamed him “TikTok Taoiseach”, a millennial leader with the near-impossible mission of keeping Fine Gael in power. At the moment the next general elections are scheduled for March 2025. But the prime minister is playing his cards very well.
At first, McDonald wanted to distance himself from the controversy his party was experiencing in Belfast due to the whole conspiracy surrounding the party’s former press officer in Northern Ireland, Michael McMonagle, found guilty of 14 counts of sexual solicitation of minors. Although he was quietly sacked three years ago, it has now emerged that two colleagues, including Sinn Féin’s chief image adviser at Stormont, wrote letters of recommendation to him for a new job at the British Heart Foundation charity.
For her part, in Kildare, a sleeper county south-west of Dublin, Sinn Féin MP Patricia Ryan has announced she will leave the party and run as an independent, accusing party directors of reviewing her social media posts, erasing their constituents’ opinions about a local asylum-seeker camp. At least 10 local members, including the party president and secretary, joined Ryan in resigning.
While Sinn Féin continued to deny Ryan’s allegations, another even more senior figure also resigned from his position in strange circumstances. Brian Stanley, who was sacked as chairman of Parliament’s public accounts committee on Monday, accused party leaders of conspiring to ruin his reputation.
The Sinn Fein leader offered vague details about a woman who said she had complained about mistreatment by Stanley in October 2023 that had left her “traumatised and distressed”. However, he insisted that he had had reasons for leaving him at the helm of the Committee all this time.
When it was thought that there could no longer be open fronts, Niall Ó Donnghaile, former Mayor of Belfast and later leader of Sinn Féin in the Upper House of Parliament of Dublin until December 2023 stressed that the real reason for his departure from politics were the inappropriate messages he sent to a 17-year-old boy, exposing McDonald who, at the time, issued a press release praising and wishing success of 39 years in the fight against unspecified “health problems”. McDonald’s personal approval rating is now double digits lower than that of his opponents and the party is at its lowest level in five years.
In the last general elections, the nationalists were able to channel the discontent of the electorate, especially young people, attracted by their vast public housing programme, in a country where rents are among the highest in Europe. In short, rather than its nationalist objective, Sinn Féin’s popularity lies in being an anti-establishment party. Now they want to repeat the strategy. But analysts believe it will have serious difficulty diverting attention from its internal conflicts.
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