Sinn Fein, a Catholic party fighting against British rule in Northern Ireland and for the reunification of the Irish island, will have the largest faction in the Belfast Parliament, final results for Stormont in Thursday night’s election.
The largest anti-British Catholic movement in Northern Ireland, for the first time since the partition of the Irish island a century ago, won the largest number of seats in Stormont, where Protestants, who had always supported British rule in recent decades, were members of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). Democratic Unionist) the largest faction.
The current historical shift also means that the Belfast government, based on the division of power between religions, may have a Catholic leader for the first time. to fill the office Michelle O’NeillSinn Féin, head of the Northern Ireland chapter, is the party’s deputy head. Sinn Féin has already indicated that a referendum on reunification of the divided island of Ireland in 1921 should be on the agenda after the current election.
Northern Ireland is not part of Britain, which consists of the union of England, Scotland, and Wales, but together they make up the United Kingdom under the rule of the British Crown.
The 1998 Good Friday Agreement on the Settlement in Northern Ireland makes this possible if opinion polls show that a majority of the population in Northern Ireland supports the unification of the island of Ireland. In this case the referendum may be initiated by London by the then Secretary of the British Government for Northern Ireland at his own discretion, but a referendum must also be held on unification in the Republic of Ireland.
As a result of the reconciliation process launched by the 1998 agreement, the Democratic Unionist Party – the largest force in the British Protestant movement – and Sinn Fein took part in governing Northern Ireland, forming a unity government entirely unimaginable in previous decades.
However, political tensions between the two parties remain regular, and this has repeatedly led to the breakdown of interfaith governance.
Nor is it certain this time that a Sinn Fein-led Northern Ireland government can be formed immediately. The Catholic party cannot govern alone under the terms of the 1998 agreement;
The party that gave Stormont’s second largest faction should delegate to the Deputy Prime Minister, a position previously held by Michel O’Neill on behalf of Sinn Féin, and Sir Jeffrey DonaldsonThe leader of the second-placed DUP has yet to indicate whether the party will do so.
The FDP makes government participation primarily dependent on the fate of the Northern Ireland Protocol to the Conditions for Ending Britain’s Membership in the European Union (Brexit). The purpose of this protocol is to ensure that, despite Brexit, there is no need to re-impose physical controls on the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, which is the only common land border between the United Kingdom and the European Union. One of the main achievements of the settlement agreement, there was no control for many years, but to remain so, the Northern Ireland Protocol provides for the control of trade in goods between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
This DUP, unlike the pro-EU Sinn Fein party, is a radically EU skeptical movement, which finds it unacceptable and demands its abolition, on the grounds that this system calls into question Northern Ireland’s constitutional position within the United Kingdom.
In the UK’s referendum on EU membership in 2016, a narrow national average of 51.89 percent voted to leave, but in Northern Ireland nearly 56 percent of voters voted to stay.
(MTI)
