Sinn Féin, pro-reunification, confirms its lead

The hold of Irish nationalists (mainly Catholics) in Northern Ireland was confirmed. For the first time in the history of this nation of the United Kingdom, Sinn Féin, the main pro-reunification party in Ireland, came out on top in the local elections on Thursday 18 May – the final result of which is still not in. Published on Saturday. In 2022, a former political wing of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) already won regional parliamentary elections for the first time since the partition of Ireland (in 1921). The shock was severe for the hitherto dominant Northern Irish Unionist community (Protestant, favorable to remaining in the United Kingdom).

Some 462 municipal councilor posts were up for grabs across eleven municipal constituencies in Northern Ireland. Sinn Féin managed to elect 144 candidates (thirty-nine more than in the 2019 municipal elections), particularly in places in the east such as Lisburn or Ballymena, hitherto considered unionist strongholds. In Belfast, Unionists hold just 17 of the 60 seats on the Northern Irish capital’s city council.

In the “South”, the Republic of Ireland (in opposition but increasingly popular), the Nationalist Party benefited from a strong mobilization of its sympathizers and an underlying demographic trend: according to the 2021 census, Catholics now outnumber Protestants. Nation.

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Brexit has also seriously weakened the Protestant community. The DUP (Democratic Unionist Party), the first party of this Northern Irish trend, which supported the referendum to leave the European Union in 1996, managed to retain its position in 2019 (with 122 municipal councillors). Votes from moderate unionists, who want to return to the Coalition (a neutral party from a constitutional point of view), are irritated by the DUP’s negative and backward attitude.

For more than a year, the Unionist movement refused to participate in the Northern Ireland Assembly at Stormont Palace, preventing the formation of a government and undermining the Good Friday Peace Agreement concluded in 1998. By establishing an equal distribution of power between the two communities. The DUP initially rejected the Northern Irish protocol on the grounds that it threatened the Unionists’ British identity. This part of the Brexit deal guarantees the nation’s dual status – it is British but partly in the European internal market to avoid creating a customs border on the island of Ireland.

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