A historic election for all of Ireland

En 1921, the British divided the island of Ireland and drew the borders of Northern Ireland in such a way as to ensure a Protestant and unionist majority, that is to say in favor of remaining within the British crown. . Since then, the executive set up in Belfast has always been controlled by a unionist party. This is to say if the term “historic” is not excessive to describe the victory of Sinn Fein, Thursday, May 5, in the elections to the Local Assembly of Northern Ireland. Since its foundation in 1905, the raison d’etre of the Irish Nationalist Party is the independence of the whole of the island vis-à-vis London. The organization, which militates in fact for the dissolution of Northern Ireland, comes to power in the said province.

This shift appears all the more incredible as it is indirectly linked to an event desired and defended by the current British power: Brexit. The divorce from the European Union, which was rejected in the 2016 referendum by 56% of Northern Irish voters, triggered a movement away from Great Britain, marked by the boom in trade between the two parts of the island, at the expense of those with Britain.

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The earthquake is all the stronger since Sinn Fein has long been the legal political showcase of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), involved in the violence during the thirty years of the civil war which, from 1969, made more than 3,500 dead. Since the 1998 peace agreement which introduced power sharing, the local executive had been in the hands of the unionist parties, with Sinn Fein contenting itself with the equivalent but less prestigious position of “deputy prime minister”. The opposite situation will now prevail.

A sulphurous organization

Sinn Fein’s electoral victory marks the successful transformation of a sulphurous organization that has become a left-wing party mobilized on social issues which has broken with its Europhobia and sees Brexit as an accelerator of its central demand: the reunification of Europe. Isle. It also reflects the discomfiture of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) until now in the majority, favorable to Brexit, whose intransigence and mistakes have undermined its popularity.

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For Boris Johnson, the challenge is twofold: in the short term, the already dysfunctional Northern Irish executive risks being paralyzed by the DUP’s refusal to play second fiddle to Sinn Fein, and the deadlock in the democratic game. could cause tension. But the British Prime Minister, weakened by the setback he suffered simultaneously in local elections in the rest of the country, by the scandal of the parties watered during confinement and by economic difficulties, will have to manage the consequences of the victory, in Belfast , of a party which is also on the rise in the south of the island and foresees a referendum on the reunification of Ireland – in other words the amputation of the United Kingdom – in the next five to ten years.

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