The best time to make mistakes is when success is almost within reach. Sinn Féin, the Irish party that for decades was the political voice of the terrorist organization IRA, is immersed in a chain of scandals that threatens its claim to finally conquer power.
The current Prime Minister of Ireland, from Fine Gael, Simon Harriseither taoiseach (the Celtic term that refers to the position in political jargon), is about to bring forward the elections, as he himself admitted this Sunday to the Irish Times: “I hope they will be held in 2024.” The general consensus suggests that they will take place in late November or early December. The recently approved budgets contain a surplus, fattened by the 14,000 million euros in taxes that European justice has forced the technology giant Apple to paywhich the Irish Government has already committed to remedy the main crisis of the republic in recent decades: the housing shortage.
Four years ago, Mary Lou McDonald, the Dublin lawyer who inherited the leadership of Sinn Féin from the historic Gerry Adamsreconfigured his political speech to make it more social and attractive to young people and managed to add the highest number of votes in a general election. The two historic Irish parties—Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, two branches of the same nationalist tree that emerged more than a century ago, one more social-conservative, the other straight conservative— They had to forge a coalition to stop the rise to government of a party that until then had been marginalized.
Yeah Sinn Féin achieved the support of more than half a million voters in 2020 (out of a total of just over two million who went to the polls), a few thousand ahead of the two historical formations, it was thanks to its promise to provide new homes for the young and the middle class, and the rise of the desire for reunify the island caused by a catastrophic Brexit for Northern Ireland.
But things have changed since then. Brexit has been diluted in time, the cost of living crisis has changed the priorities of the Irish, and Sinn Féin has been unable to respond clearly to a new phenomenon for which its speech was not prepared: The arrival of thousands of irregular immigrants to an island more accustomed to its inhabitants emigrating than to receiving people has provoked a xenophobic response and a general unrest in the population. But what has worn down McDonald the most, making good of that phrase from the historic Italian politician Giulio Andreotti who said that “power wears out, especially those who do not have it”, has been the succession of scandals that has shaken the party.
One scandal after another
The first scandal arose in Northern Ireland, and the Sinn Féin leadership naively hoped that it would be limited to that territory. Although the party has never officially admitted the partition of the island – in its terminology there is no Northern Ireland as a territorial entity, only “the north of Ireland” – the truth is that the organization functions almost autonomously on both sides of the border.
In February of this year, Michelle O’Neill, the party’s vice president, became chief minister of the Northern Irish Home Rule Government. It was the first time in history that Sinn Féin came to power on the island, and as such it was celebrated.
By then Michael McMonagle, 42, no longer held the position of press officer of the group. He had been suspended by the organization in August 2021. But it was not until last week that it came to light that the former journalist had been convicted, after admitting his crimes, for two attempts to incite a minor to have sex and for 12 messages sexual relations, also to minors.
Sinn Féin learned of the official investigation and decided, as the Irish Catholic Church itself did for decades with its cases of pedophilia, to sweep the matter under the rug. Two officials from the party’s press department even wrote letters of recommendation to McMonagle, who managed to obtain a communications position in the organization. British Heart Foundation in September 2022.
The blow that the Northern Irish chief minister received at the Stormont Autonomous Assembly led to her party leader and president, Mary Lou McDonaldto attempt a damage containment strategy with the announcement of a review of Sinn Féin’s internal rules and structures. “Responsibility will always be demanded for behavior like this. “I am committed to ensuring that incidents like this do not happen again,” he promised.
The calm only lasted a few days. Party MP Patricia Ryan, who represented the south Dublin county of Kildare, abruptly announced her resignation. She took with her 10 members of Sinn Féin, who will collaborate in her next candidacy as an independent.
Ryan accuses the party’s leadership of having vetoed his comments on social media and those of voters in his constituency. All of them expressed their rejection of the camp deployed in the area by hundreds of irregular immigrants. Sinn Féin is unable to articulate a firm response to the populist protests of many of its own voters faced with the presence of asylum seekers on their streets.
“The people of County Kildare want their public facilities to be clean, and taxpayers’ money not spent cleaning up this mess,” the MP wrote on Facebook.
More sexual messages
The final explosion came last Tuesday, during a debate in the Irish Parliament. Sinn Féin leader McDonald has admitted that former Belfast mayor and Senate President Niall Ó Donngahile was suspended as a member of the party on September 13 last year. A 17-year-old member had complained to management after receiving sexual messages sent by Ó Donngahile.
Sinn Féin not only confirmed the excuse given then by the politician for his withdrawal – “health problems” – but McDonald herself fired him with a message full of praise, when the true reason for his dismissal was already known.
“The record of this party in terms of secrecy and lack of transparency is astonishing,” the Foreign Minister, Micheál Martin, leader of Fianna Fáil and until recently, took the opportunity to denounce. taoiseach in the coalition government. Each of the two parties has enjoyed the leadership of the Executive during one of the halves of the mandate. “Sinn Féin has lied again on a serious matter, and has once again been involved in an attempted cover-up,” Martin said. It returned to the minds of many voters the memory of Gerry Adams’ brother, Liam, convicted of sexual assault on his own daughter. A matter that the party hid for a long time.
The average of the latest polls places Sinn Féin tied with Fianna Fáil, with 19% support. Fine Gael has a comfortable 25% majority. If early elections are finally called, Mary Lou McDonald’s party will face a difficult hill to overcome, and may see its aspirations to govern the island disappear again.
