Protests planned as N Ireland matches no-government record
LONDON (AP) — Protesters demanded Northern Ireland’s feuding political parties get back to governing, as the region matched a world record Tuesday for the longest peacetime period without a government.
It has been 589 days since the Catholic-Protestant power-sharing administration collapsed in January 2017 over a botched green-energy project. The rift soon widened to broad- er cultural and political issues separating Northern Ireland’s British unionists and Irish nationalists, and attempts to restore the government have stalled. Belgium spent 589 days without an elected government between 2010 and 2011.
Protesters used the hashtag #wedeservebetter to call for the former governing parties, the Democratic Unionists and Sinn Fein, to restore the power-sharing government. Demonstrators planned to hold demonstrations in several cities on Tuesday evening.
Civil servants have run the government in Northern Ireland since the administration collapsed, with major spending and policy decisions deferred.
The British government stepped in to approve Northern Ireland’s budget, but has resisted pressure to take direct control from London.The political crisis has left 1.8 million people without a government and threatens power-sharing, the key achievement of the 1998 peace accord that ended decades of violence and bloodshed in Northern Ireland.