Word: feins
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...much more is at stake over the next six weeks than one man's political career. The scandal broke at a critical time for the province's shaky power-sharing agreement. For months, the two biggest parties in government, the DUP and the Catholic-backed Sinn Fein, have been at loggerheads over the devolution of policing and justice powers from London to the Northern Ireland Assembly, which was reconvened two years ago following its suspension in 2002. Sinn Fein wants control over the province's police force to be transferred to Belfast to end what it perceives...
...County Fermanagh. Many fear that a political collapse could play into the dissidents' hands - and bring more violence. "A lot depends on the next few days in relation to progress on policing and justice," says Michael Graham, a political-history professor at Queen's University in Belfast. "If Sinn Fein don't feel they're getting very far, I think they're likely to pull the plug." (See pictures of the British army leaving Northern Ireland...
...Peter Robinson has said he will continue to negotiate with Sinn Fein during his six-week break. But a failure to reach a consensus could cause the fragile coalition to fall apart, which would trigger new elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly. And this may not be good for the DUP. The party's traditional base - rural Evangelical Protestants - has been rocked by Iris Robinson's affair, which may cause some voters to drift toward the anti-power-sharing Traditional Unionist Voice Party or the more moderate Ulster Unionist Party, which recently forged an alliance with the British Conservative Party...
...disclosures come at a delicate time for Northern Ireland's fragile power-sharing government of Catholic and Protestant parties. Peter Robinson and his Deputy First Minister, Martin McGuinness of the Sinn Fein party, have failed to reach an agreement over the devolution of policing and justice powers from London to Northern Ireland, despite months of negotiations. Catholic republicans have for years accused the British-run law-and-order system of having a pro-Protestant bias, while Protestant unionists have been reluctant to alter the current setup. The impasse has added to the public's frustration over a perceived lack...
...recently, Kennedy's snub of Adams at the St. Patrick's Day celebrations in Washington in 2005 and his decision to instead meet the family of Robert McCartney - the father of two allegedly murdered by IRA members in a Belfast bar earlier that year - was highly embarrassing for Sinn Fein. The McCartney murder, and Kennedy's reaction to it, added to the pressure on Sinn Fein to cooperate with police in Northern Ireland - something the party had historically refused to do. Today, Sinn Fein representatives sit on Northern Ireland's Policing Board, and the party routinely calls on the public...