Sinn Féin, the former political wing of the now inactive IRA, made history in the last May elections in Northern Ireland by becoming, for the first time, the party with the most votes since the partition of the island in 1921. The Agreement of Good Friday of 1998, which sealed peace between Catholics and Protestants – the same one that this year marks its 25th anniversary – dictates that both communities must govern in coalition. However, the DUP unionists have refused again this week to make a move by extending the institutional paralysis of Belfast. Protestants are not willing to do anything until the Irish Protocol, a key piece of the Brexit agreement, is changed. London and Brussels are immersed in new negotiations to relax the new customs controls that must be applied in the region. In any case, the European divorce has left the British province with a different status from the rest of the United Kingdom, which gives impetus to the historical objective that the nationalists have always had: a referendum for the reunification of the island. Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin, 1969) analyzes this historic moment.
What was the first thing that crossed your mind in the last Northern Irish elections in May when you learned that Sinn Fein had become the most voted party for the first time in history?
Well, I thought to myself, wow, this is quite an achievement. She was incredibly happy. But what is happening in Ireland is much bigger than any political party and it is bigger than Sinn Fein. What is there now is a dynamic and a real opportunity to try to fix, heal, rebuild. Not all countries have that opportunity. I think as Irish we shouldn’t get away from the fact that we are somehow privileged to have the chance to not just look back and deal with it, but collectively build towards the future. So the day we found out the results was very exciting. Even then I had concerns about whether the unionists would be able to form a coalition government led by a republican chief minister. And that question has yet to be answered.
[Los unionistas del DUP se niegan a formar gobierno de coalición hasta que no haya cambios en el Protocolo de Irlanda. (La frontera entre la República de Irlanda (miembro de la UE) y la provincia británica de Irlanda del Norte fue el principal desafío de las arduas e interminables negociaciones del Brexit. Por una parte, había que respetar el Acuerdo de Viernes Santo de 1998 que selló la paz entre católicos y protestantes y que determina que no puede haber frontera dura. Pero por otra, había que proteger al mercado único. Finalmente Boris Johnson apostó por `mover´ la frontera al mar de Irlanda, pero eso deja a la provincia británica de Irlanda del Norte con un estatus distinto al del resto de Reino Unido que obliga a realizar controles a los bienes que llegan desde Gran Bretaña (Escocia, Inglaterra, Gales)]
Brexit was disastrous for Ireland. We knew it was going to cause the kinds of problems we’ve seen. The protocol is a consequence of Brexit. It is a necessary intervention to support the peace process and prevent there being no hard border on the island of Ireland. And we must remember that although some want to convey the idea that the majority is against the protocol, this is not the case. In the May elections, as in the previous Belfast assembly term, the majority of the elected representatives of the people of Northern Ireland supported the protocol. Entrepreneurs in the north of Ireland acknowledge that there are things that could be improved to make the procedures easier, but they assure that the protocol is necessary. Therefore, it is neither fair nor acceptable that only one party, the DUP, is obstructing the functioning of the institutions. There have been elections, citizens have expressed their democratic point of view and here we are stuck in this limbo.
For the first time there is now optimism in the new negotiations that London and Brussels hold again regarding the protocol to soften controls. But even if they do reach an agreement, do you think the DUP will accept any solution that leaves Northern Ireland with a different status from the rest of the UK?
The truth is that the DUP, on many other issues, has been happy and in fact quite insistent that Northern Ireland take a radically different position to Britain. We could cite numerous cases of civil rights and human rights, the physical integrity of women [ley aborto] and the right to marriage for the LGBT community. In those cases, for the DUP there is no problem in having a different position. Therefore, what they are doing now is a ruse. The reality is that the DUP once advocated a hard Brexit. That’s the truth. They were repeatedly told what that result would mean for Ireland and the problems it would entail for our small island nation as we build peace and democracy. And now, unfortunately, we have the absolute irony that those who advocated most vehemently for Brexit are crying for the consequences that it has brought, which is the protocol. We all have to be adults and accept the consequences of our decisions.
London has already said that, for the moment, it will not call new early elections, so the paralysis seems to be going on for a long time. Throughout history, when Catholics and Protestants have failed to form a coalition government, autonomy has been suspended and the Northern Irish have come to be governed by the Government of the United Kingdom, known as ‘direct rule’. But if the paralysis continues, what Sinn Fein is now proposing is to create a ‘joint authority’ made up of London and Dublin.
Our best option is to get the institutions working again. That is what we want to happen. But if this doesn’t happen, of course, Dublin has to have a role in running the affairs of Northern Ireland. That is one of the fundamental principles of the Good Friday Agreement and it should prevail. We are one island. We work together. That’s the only way.
The paralysis in Belfast coincides with a highly symbolic moment. April marks the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. There are voices who believe that the time has come to review the agreement and change the principle of shared power.
Success in Ireland has consisted of moving out of the past towards a democratic process of peace and power sharing. There is no alternative on the island of Ireland other than power sharing. Modern democracy is about collaboration, stakeholder participation, citizen participation, people participation. There are those who now wish to turn back the clock. But they won’t get it. For those who dislike democratic election results or long for a time when some people were less than others, our message is clear: those days are over. The dilemma should not be about how we change the Good Friday Agreement. Our democratic dilemma now is how do we make sure that everyone actually abides by the rules. And I hope this happens sooner rather than later.
Is Brexit accelerating your plan to unify Ireland?
Brexit was a disaster from the start, a bad idea. That is our opinion. The British people made their choice. The people of Northern Ireland voted to stay. And Brexit has caused real problems for Ireland. That’s why we have the protocol. The protocol mitigates and addresses the worst of those problems, not all of them, but the worst of them. So the protocol has to stay. So, did Brexit accelerate, deepen the conversation about the border, about partition, about Irish unity? Yes. It has had that effect. But if I could wish things away, I wish Brexit would go away. Unfortunately, I’m not a fairy godmother. I don’t have a magic wand, so I can’t do that.
For when then a referendum for the reunification of the island?
This is the decade where change will occur. To that end, we are well aware that there must be a preparation. So the Dublin government has a very particular responsibility not to bury its head in the sand, to not pretend that change is not happening. The most responsible thing any government should do is create the democratic space for talks, so that when we do have a constitutional change, it is done in an orderly, peaceful and fully democratic manner. That is the moment in which we find ourselves on the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. What is the next chapter? What is the final chapter? It is the path to full reconciliation and reunification. And we can get it. It’s going to take work. We are not naive, but we can certainly do it.
