Rise of Sinn Fein party upends politics as usual in Ireland
DUBLIN — Ireland’s political parties were scrambling to adjust to a new reality Monday, 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% 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.
Fianna Fail received 22.2% of the votes and Fine Gael, the party of incumbent Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, got 20.9%.
Sinn Fein’s left-wing proposals for tackling Ireland’s housing crisis and healthcare system proved a powerful draw for young voters in a country that is still dealing with aftershocks of the 2008 global financial crisis, which hammered its debt-driven “Celtic Tiger” economy.
Vote counting resumed Monday to fill all the seats in the 160-seat Dail, the lower house of Ireland’s 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.
With more than three-quarters of the seats in parliament filled, Sinn Fein had taken 37, Fine Gael 29 and Fianna Fail 27. No party is likely to reach the 80 seats needed for a majority, making some form of coalition inevitable. But forming a stable alliance looks tough. Both 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. But as the scale of Sinn Fein’s surge became clear, Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin said: “I listen to the people....