The nationalist trend continues in Europe. Similar to the United States under president Trump. A poll on Friday last week revealed that Chancellor Angela Merkel`s party CDU dropped from 21,7 percent to «only» 12 percent. What a bombshell.
Only a few days later, we have a new bombshell. This time it is in Ireland were Sinn Fèin are celebrating a historic result. Sinn Fèin won 37 seats which is an increase of 14 on the 2016 election. Fianna Fàil lost 6 seats, but is the largest party with 38 seats. Only one more.
The IRA`s former political wing Sinn Fèin`s leader Mary Lou McDonald said the outcome was «something of a revolution in the ballot box». Sinn Fèin used to be a political wing of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), which fought for Irish unity during the decades-long sectarian conflict known as “the troubles.”
This election has been different from others and the main issues has been housing, healthcare and childcare. The answer to that is the nationalist party Sinn Fèin which is not a left-wing party but a nationalist party. A party more like a pragmatic party according to specialists.
This is a complicated phenomen because the party was changed to Sinn Fèin – The Worker`s Party in 1977 and then to the Workers’ Party in 1982. The party has been closely associated with the IRA. Natable organisations that derived from it include Democratic Left and the Irish Republic Socialist Party.
Before the split with the terrorist organisation IRA in 1969-1970, the Workers’ Party was a Marxist-Leninist political party. But the Marxist outlook became unpopular with many of the more traditionalist republicans, and the party/army leadership was criticised for failing to defend northern Catholic enclaves from loyalist attachs.
(These debates took place against the background of the violent beginning of what would become «The Troubles»).
Mr. Varadkar`s center-right party Fine Gael slumped in opinion polls amid crisis in housing and healthcare. They have been trading power for decades along with another center-right party Fianna Fail. A duopol that is now coming to an end.
Both center-right parties had ruled out an alliance with Sinn Fèin during the campaign, and Mr Varadkar said Sinn Fèin was «not a normal party.»
Sinn Fèin support a policy of «critical engagement with the EU», and have a «principled opposition» to a European superstate. It opposes an EU constitution because it would reduce the sovereignty of the member-states.
It also criticises the EU on grounds of neoliberalism. Sinn Fèin MEP Matt Carthy says the «European Union must become a cooperative union of nation states committed to working together on issus such as climate change, migration, trade, and using our common strengths to improve the lives of citizens.
If it does not, EU disintegration becomes a real possibility.
The phrase «Sinn Fèin» is Irish for «Ourselves» or «We Ourselves».The name is an assertion of Irish national soverignity and self-determination; i.e., the Irish people governing themselves, rather than being part of a political union with Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales) under the Westminister Parliament.
Sinn Fèin is the largest Irish republican party, and a republican document of the early 1980`s stated: «Both Sinn Fèin and the IRA play different but converging roles in the war of national liberation. The Irish Republican Army wages an armed campaign….. Sinn Fèin maintains the propaganda war and is the public and political voice of the movement.
The British government stated in 2005 that «we had always said all the way through we believed that Sinn Fèin and the IRA were inextricably linked and that had obvious implications at leadership level.»
«This is not a protest vote», leader of Sinn Fèin Mary Lou McDonald said on national TV yesterday. Why people voted for Sinn Fèin is their deep dissatisfaction with the traditional big two parties in Ireland. What people ask for is an alternative party for government. Huh…sounds like AfD in Germany. Another alternative party.
The risk now is a destabilisation of the Good Friday Agreement. The Belfast Agreement is a pair of agreements signed on 10 April 1998 that ended most of the violence of the Troubles. A political conflict in Northern Ireland that had been going on since the 1960`s.
It was a peace agreement between the British and Irish governemtns, and most of the political parties in Northern Irealand, on how Northern Ireland should be governed.
Ket Garden
Shiny bull 