Sinn Féin supporters, I’d guess, are feeling a bit hungover this morning. Not necessarily from an excessive intake of alcohol, although there may have been some of that too. The hangover more likely relates to the sense of elation that started on Saturday night with the news of the neck-and-neck-and-neck exit poll, and powered its way through result after result yesterday. The Sinn Féin candidate topped the poll in the Taoiseach’s constituency? Micheál Martin and Simon Coveney had to wait for the fifth or was it the sixth count before securing their seats behind the Shinner candidate? All throughout the state, the dam creaked, crumbled and was swept aside as years of political and media suppression collapsed in despair.
Mind you, the when-did-you-last-go-to-Confession approach hadn’t totally expired. Aengus O Snodaigh, having secured a massive vote, was asked how he thought Breege Quinn was feeling at this moment. O Snodaigh said he believed that the Paul Quinn case was being used by people who, now that she was no longer of use, would forget her. The reporter said nothing in response to that.
And while the Irish Times this morning uses words like ‘spectacular’ and ‘earthquake’ and ‘floodgates’ to describe Sinn Féin’s dizzying victory , it still manages to find room for criticism of Dessie Ellis supporters, who waved the tricolour as well as singing ‘Come Out, ye Black and Tans’. (No, I’m not making this up.) No one thought to ask if this singing might be an amused swipe at Fine Gael for its disastrous RIC commemoration plans which people everywhere rejected.
And of course the Irish Times has its columnists that continue to search for RAs under the bed. Newton Emerson this morning continues to fret over the Quinn case, announcing it as a paramilitary killing and lamenting that “it is probably too late for the Republic to protect itself by launching a law and order crackdown against the Provisional IRA”.
Somebody should break the news to him that the IRA have decommissioned and dissolved.
When Sinn Féin was a small besieged party in the south, this kind of wacky-backy hogwash might have worked; but now that they’ve shown, despite all the mud-throwing of the final week of the campaign, that they’re the most popular party in the state, it’s going to be harder and harder for the likes of Emerson to beat the thickets with his blackthorn stick, in quixotic search of something, anything from the past to throw at the Shinners.
Regardless of what the south’s media say, regardless of what final form the government in the south takes, yesterday imposed a totally new shape on southern politics and that shape is here to stay. Time to change the record, Newton old bean.
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