Victory Ushers in Era of Hope for Northern Ireland

BELFAST, Northern Ireland — The architects of a historic power-sharing peace agreement for Northern Ireland celebrated their victory Saturday as election officials announced that 71.12% of voters in the province had embraced the deal in a record turnout.

Politicians and average citizens said they believe the “yes” vote on the Good Friday agreement is a resounding rejection of violence by the province’s Protestants and Roman Catholics and offers a chance for a new era of political compromise after 30 years of sectarian killing.

“This is the result we have worked for and wanted, another giant stride along the path to peace, hope and the future,” said British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who campaigned for the agreement up to the last day.

Partial results from a simultaneous vote in the Irish Republic showed nearly 95% in favor of the accord that requires Ireland to revise its constitutional claim to the six counties of Northern Ireland.

As Chief Electoral Officer Pat Bradley read out the favorable vote count in Belfast’s cavernous King’s Hall, members of the “yes” campaign broke into cheers, and Ulster Unionist Party leader David Trimble, the Protestants’ chief negotiator on the accord, let out an audible sigh of relief before the world’s television cameras.

Trimble’s party was bitterly divided over the agreement, and he came under personal attack from many pro-British Protestants for making common cause with their ancient enemies.

“It’s a very convincing endorsement,” the button-down Trimble said. “I am very pleased with this result.”

“Yes” campaigners jeered their rivals in the “no” camp, led by the Rev. Ian Paisley of the Democratic Unionist Party and Robert McCartney of the United Kingdom Unionist Party. “Cheerio, Bob,” they shouted, waving goodbye. “All the best. Go home.”

The streets of Belfast, capital of the province, were quiet after the results were announced, as both sides avoided flag-waving demonstrations and opportunities for violence.

Supporters of the agreement said they were elated by the fact that more than 70% of their bloodied society had managed to agree on anything at all, let alone on such a profound change.

Their euphoria was muted, however, by an awareness of the monumental tasks that lie ahead to put the agreement into effect and make it stick through the creation of governing bodies, the release of prisoners who belong to paramilitary groups honoring a cease-fire, efforts to decommission weapons from the armed groups and police reforms.

“There is a lot of hope out there,” said Gerry Adams, chief of the Irish Republican Army’s political wing, Sinn Fein. “Now we have to deliver on that hope.”

Just how incremental that task will be was apparent on British television. Trimble, who never spoke directly to Adams during months of peace negotiations, appeared for the first time sitting at the same table with the Sinn Fein leader, but he still would not acknowledge him.

The agreement is meant to be a compromise between the Protestant majority’s demand that Northern Ireland remain forever a part of the United Kingdom and the dream of the Catholic minority that the six counties be united with the Irish Republic. Northern Ireland was separated from the other 26 counties on the island in 1921, and about 55% of its population is Protestant.

The accord says that Northern Ireland will remain under the British crown as long as a majority in the province wants to remain there. Meanwhile, Britain will turn over day-to-day rule to a new provincial government, the Northern Ireland Assembly, in which Protestants and Catholics will have shared power.

In response to nationalist desires, the new assembly and the Dublin-based Irish Parliament are to form a North-South Council, the first official body to coordinate policies across all of Ireland since the division.

And to reassure Protestants, a Council of the Isles will join the governments in Belfast and Dublin with new legislative assemblies being set up in Scotland and Wales.

The yes vote clears the way for a June 25 election for a 108-member Northern Ireland Assembly, from which a multi-party executive is to be selected on the basis of a proportional vote.

“This agreement is supported across the whole community with a majority in both camps,” said Marjorie “Mo” Mowlam, the British Cabinet secretary in charge of Northern Ireland. “The builders of the future can now come together to make the agreement work.”

But Protestant opponents of the agreement who fear it will lead to a united Ireland refused to acknowledge defeat. The firebrand Paisley insisted that the 28.8% no vote was all Protestant and translated into a 56.6% majority of unionist voters against the accord.

Paisley’s claim is difficult to prove, since voters do not declare their religious or political affiliation on ballots and electoral officials did not give a breakdown of the vote by districts. An exit poll by Irish state television indicated that 51% of Protestants said yes and 49% said no. That poll had a margin of error of 2.5 percentage points.

Regardless of the count, the unrepentant Paisley demonstrated that his rejectionist camp will not disappear quietly into the political sunset. He pledged to run in the upcoming election with the aim of taking over the assembly.

“I’m going into the assembly to save the union,” he told Ulster Radio.

The accord has checks and balances that are meant to maintain an equilibrium between Protestant and Catholic interests, but these safeguards also could backfire if Paisley manages to get enough rejectionists elected to the assembly.

All major decisions made by the assembly must be approved either by a majority of both the unionist and nationalist members voting or by 60% of those members voting, including at least 40% from each camp.

The assembly is to create the North-South body that Catholic nationalists want. If it failed to do so, however, the assembly itself--which unionist negotiators sought--would also collapse. With enough blocking votes, Paisley could kill the council, the assembly and the agreement he never wanted.

Aware of this, the Ulster Unionists’ Trimble went directly from his triumph at King’s Hall into party meetings to begin selecting candidates to stand for election.

There are other potential stumbling blocks that do not depend on Paisley.

Sinn Fein is sure to win enough votes to have at least one seat on the 12-member executive. Trimble and other moderate unionists say they do not want any Sinn Fein member in a Cabinet post unless the IRA has handed over its weapons, but Sinn Fein leaders say they are an unarmed political party and that the agreement requires them only to use their influence to get paramilitary organizations to give up their guns.

“What they’re asking for is surrender,” said Martin McGuinness, Sinn Fein’s chief negotiator. “What they’re asking for is a military victory, and those aren’t on offer.”

A resumption of political violence also could threaten the agreement. The IRA and major Protestant paramilitary groups are honoring a cease-fire, but there are republican splinter groups that reject the accord as a sellout to British rule.

On Saturday, Irish police intercepted two cars carrying large quantities of what appeared to be home-made explosives toward the Northern Ireland border. The drivers of the cars were arrested.

One of the cars was the same make as an automobile intercepted at Dublin’s main port in early April carrying a 980-pound car bomb bound for Britain. In that incident, Irish police ruled out IRA involvement and blamed a splinter group. But if bombs start to explode, unionists may seek to hold Sinn Fein accountable.

On Saturday, however, proponents of the accord sought to focus attention on the momentum that has been created for peace as the agreement was signed on April 10, Sinn Fein adopted it at a party congress May 10, and voters in Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic adopted it Friday.

John Hume, the moderate Irish nationalist credited with wooing Sinn Fein into legal and peaceful politics, said Protestant and Catholic voters “want us to build institutions which in the future, unlike in the past, we share together.”

He greeted a crowd of his Social Democratic and Labor Party activists and voters gathered across from King’s Hall.

“We are overcoming,” he said.

His meaning was clear: Peace is incomplete.

“It’s a start. We understand it’s only a start,” said Maighread Finn, 26, who stood in the crowd with her mother and 5-year-old daughter. “But we see the possibility of a way forward. It’s an exciting day.”