The euphoria is over. A week after the local elections and the historic victory for Sinn Fein nationalists, ex-political showcase of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), the new deputies do not seem ready to sit, in North Ireland. This Friday, May 13, 2022, the Local Assembly failed to appoint its president, for lack of an – essential – consensus between nationalists (pro-reunification of the two Ireland) and unionists (pro-United Kingdom).
The DUP, the main unionist party, refused to vote, blocking the Assembly, which will not even be able to function in a reduced form. Its leader Jeffrey Donaldson had warned that he would also shun the appointment of the deputy prime minister of the coalition government. However, the Peace Accords, signed in 1998 to put an end to thirty years of civil war, require that the province be governed jointly by a representative of each community. Michelle O’Neill, the leader of Sinn Fein, being naturally destined to become Prime Minister.
Also read. PORTRAIT. Michelle O’Neill, peaceful face of Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland
Why this blocking of the DUP? Because of the “Protocol on Northern Ireland”, again. This provision of Brexit, which provides for the control of British products in the ports of the province, creates in fact a frontier
in the Irish Sea. Unionists see it as an attack on the unity of the Kingdom. And say they are ready to block the installation of the Assembly and the formation of the government, as long as the Protocol is not modified.
Feeling the blow coming, London and Brussels have resumed negotiations by phone on Thursday. Without success. The United Kingdom is again threatening to act unilaterally by suspending certain points of the trade agreement. And the European Commission is annoyed: The EU cannot solve all the problems created by the […] type of Brexit that the United Kingdom has chosen.
Sinn Fein, eager to take the reins of the British province for the first time, denounces the attitude shameful
of the DUP and insists on the urgency of voting on the budgets. Relative urgency for the deputies of the DUP: whether they sit or not, they already receive their allowances…
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