The nationalist Sinn Fein party came out on top in the local elections in Northern Ireland on Saturday, May 20, winning the largest number of seats at stake among the eleven municipal councils of the British province.
The Republicans of Sinn Fein, in favor of reunification with the neighboring Republic of Ireland, came out ahead in the ballot, ahead of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), an ultra-conservative formation fiercely attached to belonging to the United Kingdom.
In detail, Sinn Fein won 143 of the 462 seats in eleven municipal councils. Only the results of six seats have not yet been released. Sinn Fein leader Michelle O’Neill described the results as“historical”and told the BBC that his party’s campaign had found “an echo with the electorate”.
She also claimed that Sinn Fein “would redouble its efforts to restore executive power”, blocked for a year by the unionists of the DUP. Opposed to post-Brexit trade rules, which it says threaten the province’s ties with the rest of the UK, the DUP has been boycotting local institutions, supposedly shared with Republicans Sinn Fein, for more than a year.
Unionist party leader Jeffrey Donaldson, however, defended the results of the DUP, which won 122 seats, saying it had a good “resisted”. Mr Donaldson meanwhile attributed Sinn Fein’s success to “collapse” of its pro-Ireland nationalist rival, the Democratic Social and Labor Party (SDLP).