Word: feins
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...Ireland - sports, housing, education - are divided along Catholic-Protestant lines, few issues are as contentious as policing. For decades, the Catholic minority has viewed the predominantly Protestant police force with deep mistrust. Many Catholic neighborhoods were no-go areas for security forces; republican politicians, such as those in Sinn Fein (now the largest Catholic-backed party in the province), would tell supporters not to assist the police...
...Since 2001, though, Sinn Fein has officially backed the reformed Police Service of Northern Ireland; party members now occupy seats on the watchdog body that oversees the force. In return for this support, republicans felt, there was an implied agreement that Northern Ireland's government would take control of policing and justice matters. After years of Protestant outcry, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) recently backed the move. Sinn Fein has agreed to support a new group overseeing contentious parades by the Protestant Orange Order. The accord has steadied the ship at Stormont, but the power-sharing government, particularly the beleaguered...
...three-way split of the Protestant vote among the DUP, the TUV and the moderate Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) could throw power sharing into complete disarray and allow Sinn Fein to emerge as Northern Ireland's largest party. That would mean a Sinn Fein politician, most likely Martin McGuinness, would assume the role of First Minister. The prospect of serving as McGuinness's deputy would be anathema to most Protestant politicians, and the government could well fall apart. (See pictures of the British army leaving Northern Ireland...
...longer," says John Mooney, co-author of Black Operations, a book on the 1998 Real IRA bombing of Omagh that killed 29 people. "The people involved in these latest attacks only recently defected from the mainstream republican movement and no longer believe in the strategy being pursued by Sinn Fein...
...would help if the mainstream parties were working together more closely. During recent talks on policing, Protestant and Catholic parties stayed in separate rooms, with messengers shuttling between the rival camps. Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams recently wrote on his blog that some unionist politicians refuse to share an elevator with him. As external pressures mount on the shaky consensus at Stormont, the parties' ability to work together across the sectarian divide will be tested to the full...