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EDITOR IN CHIEF- ABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

Sinn Fein hails ‘new era’ for N Ireland after historic polls

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BELFAST: Sinn Fein leader Michelle O’Neill on Saturday hailed a “new era” for Northern Ireland as pro-UK unionists conceded a historic election victory for her Irish nationalist party, while threatening anew to boycott the devolved government.


“It’s a defining moment for our politics and our people’’, O’Neill said before full results were announced.


“I will provide leadership which is inclusive, which celebrates diversity, which guarantees rights and equality for those who have been excluded, discriminated against or ignored in the past.”


Tallies from Thursday’s complex proportional voting showed Sinn Fein, the former political wing of the IRA paramilitary group, had secured at least 23 seats for the 90-seat legislature, setting it on course for victory. Sinn Fein will have enough seats to make O’Neill first minister, a century after Northern Ireland was carved out as a Protestant fiefdom under British rule.


“The people have spoken and our job is now to turn up. I expect others to turn up also’’, O’Neill told reporters, stressing the new government must tackle foremost a cost-of-living crisis in the UK.


But she said a “healthy conversation is already under way” about Irish reunification, and the party is targeting a referendum in the next five years. Democratic Unionist Party leader Jeffrey Donaldson conceded that his nationalist rivals looked set to “emerge as the largest party”, with the DUP winning 21 seats so far.


The DUP occupied the role of first minister in the outgoing Stormont assembly, before it collapsed the executive in protest at post-Brexit trading rules between the UK and EU.


Donaldson demanded that Prime Minister Boris Johnson “deliver on his word to honour the commitments he has given and to take the action that is necessary” on the Northern Ireland Protocol.


He urged “decisive action by the government to remove the Irish Sea border, because we don’t believe it is acceptable or necessary to have checks on goods moving within the United Kingdom”.


While Sinn Fein will get to nominate a first minister, Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government cannot form unless the DUP agrees to take part.


“I want a government in Northern Ireland, but it has to be one based on stable foundations’’, Donaldson said. — AFP


“And the long shadow of the Northern Ireland Protocol is harming our economy, it’s harming political stability.”


Johnson’s Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis was expected to meet the party leaders in Belfast on Monday.


The victorious parties will have 24 weeks to resolve their differences or face a new election.


England, Wales and Scotland also voted in local and regional elections on Thursday, punishing embattled Johnson’s scandal-mired Conservatives but without a landslide for the main opposition Labour party.


Johnson is expected to lay out his post-election plans in the Queen’s Speech in parliament on Tuesday, which will have to take into account the thorny issue of forming a government in Northern Ireland, riven for decades by sectarian bloodshed. — AFP


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