Ireland’s political parties were scrambling to adjust to a new reality yesterday, after an earth-shaking election that saw the left-wing nationalist party Sinn Fein win the biggest share of votes.
Sinn Fein, the party historically linked to the Irish Republican Army and its violent struggle for a united Ireland, received 24.5 percent of the first-preference votes in Saturday’s election.
That bested Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, the two centrist parties that have governed Ireland since it won independence from Britain a century ago.
Photo: AP
Fianna Fail received 22.2 percent of the votes and Fine Gael, the party of Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, got 20.9 percent.
Vote counting was resuming yesterday to fill all the seats in the 160-seat Dail, the lower house of parliament. Ireland uses a proportional-representation system in which voters rank candidates from first to last, with the lower preferences of elected or defeated candidates redistributed among their rivals.
It is highly unlikely that any party will get the 80 seats needed for a majority in parliament.
That makes some form of coalition inevitable, but forming a stable alliance looks tough.
Fianna Fail and Fine Gael said before the election that they would not go into a coalition with Sinn Fein because of its links to past violence.
Varadkar said Fine Gael’s stance was unchanged, while Irish Minister of Finance Paschal Donohoe yesterday said Fine Gael still hopes to lead the next government.
“We will be very relevant to the formation of the next government. We will work with other parties to put ourselves into a position to lead that government,” Donohoe told Irish broadcaster RTE radio.
However, as the scale of Sinn Fein’s surge became clear, Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin said: “I’m a democrat.”
“I listen to the people. I respect the decision of the people,” he told RTE.
Fianna Fail’s director of elections, Dara Calleary, yesterday said it was “completely premature” to talk of forming a coalition government with Sinn Fein, but the party would talk to its left-wing rival.
“We certainly will engage with them. We’re not going to refuse to talk to them,” Calleary told RTE radio. “But let’s be in no doubt that those policy difficulties and those principles are still difficult hurdles.”
“This vote for Sinn Fein is for Sinn Fein to be in government, for Sinn Fein to make a difference, for Sinn Fein to be tested, for Sinn Fein to deliver,” party leader Mary Lou McDonald said.
“We want to talk to anyone who is interested in delivering a program for government. That is about getting to grips with the housing crisis and solving it, getting to grips with the crisis in health and giving families and workers a break and giving a new lease of life to government,” she said.
Additional reporting by Reuters
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