Sinn Fein win ‘will usher in new era’
BELFAST: Sinn Fein is the biggest party in Northern Ireland’s Assembly for the first time, a historic election result that marks a significant shift in the region’s balance of power and sends a strong message to Boris Johnson’s government in London.
The nationalist party — whose ultimate goal is to unite Northern Ireland with the neighbouring Republic of Ireland Northern Ireland won the largest number of seats and intends to nominate its northern leader Michelle O’Neill as the region’s first minister.
“Today represents a very significant moment of change,” Ms O’Neill, 45, said on Saturday. “It’s a defining moment for politics and for people. Today ushers in a new era.”
It’s the first time that a nationalist party has topped the vote since the power-sharing government was established following the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which largely ended decades of violence between unionists and nationalists. While the prospect of reuniting the island for the first time since 1921 remains far off, the election shows that the parties backing a unionist future with Britain are in retreat.
“Northern Ireland was founded as a Unionist state, with an inbuilt Unionist majority,” said Brian Hanley, assistant professor in 20th Century History at Trinity College Dublin. “The election of not just a nationalist as first minister, but a republican from a tradition which rejects the partition of Ireland entirely, is seismic.”
Sinn Fein won at least 27 seats, overtaking the formerly dominant pro-British Democratic Unionist Party, which had secured 24 as of 8.30 pm on Saturday, with 88 out of 90 seats declared, according to the BBC. The former political wing of the Irish Republican Army won 29% of first choice votes, while the DUP drew 21% support in the election held on May 5.
The results also show the exponential rise of a third force — the centrist and pro-EU Alliance Party, which more than doubled its number of seats to 17 from 8 by Saturday evening.
Focus will now turn to forming a new devolved government, with Sinn Fein and the DUP eligible to nominate the first and deputy first ministers. Under the power-sharing arrangement, the posts are equal and one cannot be in position without the other. However, DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson said on Saturday he would wait for the UK government’s response on the protocol before deciding whether to participate.