Historic Northern Ireland elections. The Irish Nationalist Party “Sinn Fein” – formerly the political arm of the IRA, the Irish People’s Army – won for the first time in history by a majority of votes. The Unionist Democratic Party (DUP), which for the past twenty years has been the largest party in Northern Ireland, has been pushed to second place. “This day represents a significant moment of change. It is a defining moment for our politics and our people,” said Michelle O’Neill, leader of Shin Payne in Northern Ireland.
The local political system in Northern Ireland has relied since the Good Friday Agreement, the 1998 peace agreement, on a built-in division of power between the two political blocs – the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which supports maintaining union with Britain and the great nationalist Shin Payne party. Which supports union with the “Republic of Ireland”, an independent Catholic state, located south of British territory.
According to the agreement, the local government must include parties on both sides of the ideological barrier. The two parties share the roles of “First Minister of Northern Ireland” (Prime Minister), the highest political position given to the party with the highest number of seats, and the First Deputy Minister, who goes to the second largest party from the political bloc against me. Under the “Good Friday Agreement” it is not possible to carry out the administration without one of them. However, even before the results were received, it was learned that the Unionists might boycott the attempts to form a government.
Northern Ireland’s largest unionist party, the DUP, has lost support among its supporters following its response to Brexit and Northern Ireland trade agreements. Following the party’s abandonment, votes split between three other pro-union parties.
Neglect of the nationalist agenda in favor of economic issues
Over the years the people of Northern Ireland have been schematically divided between the Catholic minority led by the IRA and the Shin Payne Party, which demanded independence from the British government and union with Ireland, and the Unionist Party, which relied largely on Protestants, who formed the majority in Britain. The IRA’s struggle with the British government and supporters of the Union was bloody and claimed the lives of some 3,500 people between the 1960s and the late 1990s.
Michelle O’Neill, the leader of Shin Payne in Northern Ireland, to whom the victory has been attributed, is expected to be named “First Lady”. The achievement at Shin Payne’s polls was achieved in part thanks to a change in the party’s historic messages. Like Marin Le Pen and the National Front Party in France, O’Neill also virtually abandoned the political issues and nationalist agenda associated with the party, and the message page focused mainly on burning economic issues and especially the cost of living and the National Health System (NHS).
O’Neill took advantage of the failure of the conservative and Eurosceptic “Unionist Democratic Party”, which failed to meet the public expectations of its voters in the economic sphere and suffered social anger for not insisting enough when Britain signed the Brexit that excluded Northern Ireland from the EU agreement. Economic.
Question marks are already hovering over the existence of the new government as in the past the Unionist Democratic Party said it might boycott the government before agreeing to see a first minister from one of the nationalist parties. If no government is formed within six months, the public will go to the polls again. The Minister for Northern Ireland in the British Parliament, Brandon Lewis, said he would like to see the parties reach an agreement to form a government as soon as possible. “The people of Northern Ireland deserve a stable and responsible local government,” he said. Lewis added that in the coming days he would meet with the leaders of all parties and encourage them to re-form the government “as soon as possible”.
Despite Shin Payne’s separation aspirations from the UK, there is no scenario that such a move will come to fruition in the near future. Retirement from the UK can happen after a referendum, which the London Parliament has the authority to establish. Also, in a recent survey in Northern Ireland, only about a third expressed support for such a move.
Who are you, Michelle O’Neill?
The Xin Payne party’s deputy leader, expected to become Northern Ireland’s first minister following her party’s historic victory, spoke openly about getting pregnant at 16. She said becoming a mother in adolescence defined who she is today.
“I was framed as a ‘single mother,’ ‘if not married.’
O’Neill comes from a nationalist family. Her father, Brendan Duis, spent time as an inmate due to his IRA membership, and her uncle Paul Doris was one of three IRAs shot dead by British soldiers in 1991. Her nephew Gareth Doris was an IRA member who was shot and wounded by the military in 1997, a year before the Good Friday Agreement, which led to the dissolution of the organization, which was considered a terrorist organization by the British.
O’Neill joined the Shin Payne party at the age of 21 after the Good Friday Agreements in 1998, the agreements that brought an end to the conflict with Britain, and inherited her late father’s chair at the assembly. She was elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly in 2007 and served as Minister of Agriculture, and later Minister of Health.