SINN FEIN ENJOYS EARLY GAINS IN ELECTION
Sinn Fein enjoyed a potentially historic surge in support Friday as ballots were counted for seats in the Northern Ireland Assembly, a contest triggered by the Irish nationalist party in a bitter showdown with its longtime Protestant partners in government.
At stake in the outcome from Thursday’s snap election is the revival or demise of power-sharing between Irish Catholics and British Protestants, the central objective of the U.S.-brokered Good Friday peace accord nearly two decades ago.
Partial results from a ballot count expected to run until Saturday afternoon pointed to solid gains for Sinn Fein amid the highest voter turnout since the peace breakthrough year of 1998. Turnout ran highest in Sinn Fein’s traditional working-class Catholic power bases.
Sinn Fein is seeking to overtake the Protestants of the Democratic Unionists and become the No. 1 party for the first time in Northern Ireland — an achievement that would give Sinn Fein the right to the top government post of “first minister.”
Sinn Fein achieved poll-topping results in nine districts, including MidUlster, where the party’s new leader in Northern Ireland, 40-year-old Michelle O’Neill, pictured above, was mobbed by supporters.
O’Neill, the daughter of an Irish Republican Army veteran with childhood memories of the conflict that claimed 3,700 lives, represents a leadership shift within Sinn Fein to the first postwar generation following the IRA’s 1997 cease-fire and 2005 disarmament.