Sinn Féin Victory to Fuel Debate on Future of Union

For the first time, Sinn Féin have won the most seats in the 2022 Northern Ireland Assembly election held on May 05, 2022. 

This is the seventh assembly election since the establishment of the assembly in 1998. Sinn Féin won 29% of the first preference vote, and the Democratic Unionist Party slumped to second place, with 21.3% and in third place is the centrist Alliance, which secured 13.5%. 

The election was held after the Northern Ireland Executive collapsed in February due to the resignation of the First Minister, Paul Givan of the DUP, in protest against the Northern Ireland Protocol, which put a post-Brexit trade border in the Irish Sea. 

[Note: The protocol is an element of the UK's Brexit agreement with the European Union which keeps Northern Ireland aligned with the EU single market for goods. Some unionists have said the protocol created a trade border between Northern Ireland and the UK]. 

Although Sinn Féin can now nominate a first minister, the pro-Irish reunification party cannot take up the office unless the DUP, the biggest party from the unionist bloc, agree to nominate a deputy first minister. Their leader Jeffrey Donaldson (right) has not yet made a decision on whether the party will do that. 

On Saturday, the DUP leader said his party would respect the result of the election, however, there needed to be changes made to the Northern Ireland Protocol. We will just have to see what happens next. 

Northern Ireland's government works by a system of power sharing, introduced in the 1990s as a way of ending decades of violence. However, making this work has been a difficult process – a situation which is not likely to be changed by this election. 

FYI, Northern Ireland has a first minister and a deputy first minister – one unionist, the other nationalist. Since 2006 the first minister has been chosen by the largest party in the assembly. If this is a unionist party, then the deputy minister is drawn from the largest nationalist party, and vice versa. Both ministers have equal powers, and one cannot be in office without the other. 

The executive, or cabinet is multi-party, and ministers are drawn from both unionist, nationalist and non-aligned parties, based on how many seats they have won in an election. This also means that politicians from smaller parties can be appointed as ministers. 

Anyway, Sinn Féin’s Michelle O'Neill (right) who served as deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland between 2020 and 2022 and who is entitled to become first minister says it had been an election of "real change" and a "defining moment for our politics and for our people". 

And she adds: "We will work with those who serve all other political perspectives, we will show respect and we expect to be shown respect". 

At one time, Sinn Féin voices were silenced – from October 1988 to September 1994, the UK government had banned broadcasts of the voices of representatives from Sinn Féin on television and radio to supposedly combat IRA propaganda and prevent them from using the media for political advantage. In fact, the BBC even employed an actor to voice the words of the then Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams. 

But this weekend, Sinn Féin voices will be heard because the one-time political pariahs are now the political powerbrokers at Stormont! 

I have no doubt that it's a question of time before they send a stark message to Boris Johnson’s government that a referendum on a united Ireland is now on the agenda.

Yesterday, having seen her party increase their number of council seats in Scotland, Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon (left), said Sinn Féin’s performance in Northern Ireland had highlighted that there were now big questions around the future of the UK as a political entity. 

“There’s no doubt there are big fundamental questions being asked of the UK as a political entity right now”, Sturgeon declared. “They’re being asked here in Scotland, they’re being asked in Northern Ireland, they’re being asked in Wales and I think we’re going to see some fundamental changes to UK governance in the years to come and I am certain that one of those changes is going to be Scottish independence”.

As far as the reunification goal is concerned, Sinn Féin’s victory won’t bring a united Ireland right away – but it’s getting closer.