Northern Ireland Election 2007 - Results

The polar extremes of Northern Ireland politics have won the province's election and will dictate whether a Catholic-Protestant administration can be revived this month, final results confirmed Friday.

The hard-line Protestants of the Democratic Unionist Party finished first with 36 seats in the 108-member Northern Ireland Assembly.

The result gives the Democratic Unionists veto power over forming a power-sharing administration with the major Catholic-backed party, Sinn Fein, which won 28 seats.

Trailing far behind were moderate Protestants and Catholics – who championed the Good Friday peace accord of 1998 and led a power-sharing administration that collapsed 4½ years ago amid incessant Protestant-Sinn Fein conflict.

The British and Irish prime ministers, Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern, called on the Democratic Unionists to forge a joint administration with Sinn Fein by March 26. They said ordinary voters were demanding this.

“After so many years of frustration and disappointment, they want Northern Ireland to move on to build a better future together through the devolved (power) institutions,” the premiers said in a joint statement.

Blair and Ahern insisted that the March 26 deadline must end either with power-sharing revived – or the newly elected assembly disbanded.

At stake is the central aim of the landmark Good Friday deal: an administration drawn equally from the British Protestant majority and Irish Catholic minority that can govern Northern Ireland in a spirit of compromise.

But Democratic Unionist leader Ian Paisley and his senior deputies say the deadline is a bluff designed to coerce them into accepting Sinn Fein prematurely. They argue that Sinn Fein officials still cover up criminal activity by members of the IRA and other anti-British paramilitary groups.

“Is anyone seriously suggesting that on the 27th of March, it's all over for Northern Ireland?” said Democratic Unionist lawmaker Jeffrey Donaldson.

Negotiations began Friday even before the last ballots were counted. Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain met separately with delegations from the Democratic Unionists and Sinn Fein at Hillsborough Castle, his official residence southwest of Belfast.

Hain stressed that the deadline was set down in British law and not negotiable. “I have no discretion on the 26th of March. Either there's devolution in place or it falls away,” he said.

The British and Irish governments say peacemaking moves by Sinn Fein and the outlawed Irish Republican Army have removed any excuse for the Democratic Unionists not to sit down in Cabinet alongside Sinn Fein, which for decades supported the IRA's bloody campaign to overthrow Northern Ireland by force.

Those moves include the IRA's decision to renounce violence and disarm in 2005, and Sinn Fein's conference vote Jan. 28 to begin cooperating with the Police Service of Northern Ireland.

Blair and Ahern are threatening to impose an alternative – giving the Irish government a greater role in governing Northern Ireland – if Paisley refuses to play ball by the deadline. They also say tens of millions of dollars in increased funding for Northern Ireland development hinges on a Democratic Unionist-Sinn Fein coalition taking off this month.

The moderate parties that led power-sharing from 1999 to 2002 – the Protestants of the Ulster Unionists and the Catholics of the Social Democratic and Labour Party, or SDLP – finished in third and fourth place, respectively.

The Ulster Unionists, for decades the dominant party in Northern Ireland, won 18 seats. The SDLP, long the most ardent advocate of power-sharing, won 16.

The result means the Democratic Unionists can claim five of the administration's 12 posts, including the top post of “first minister” for Paisley.

Sinn Fein is entitled to four posts, including “deputy first minister.” The Ulster Unionists get two posts, the SDLP just one.

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