The new Northern Irish Prime Minister, Michelle O’Neill, represents the regeneration of the nationalist Sinn Féin, a formation that little by little leaves behind a past linked to the IRA and aspires to establish itself as the main political force of the British province, without ever giving up the objective of the reunification of Ireland.
Seven years after taking the reins of the party, O’Neill has managed to complete part of the roadmap designed by his predecessors, the historic Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, long before the end of the past conflict in 1998.
With the Irish Republican Army (IRA) already inactive, but still very present in the collective imagination after causing more than 3,000 deaths in almost three decades, the nationalist leader, 47, is the first non-unionist politician to lead the region in her one hundred years of history as a British province.
With his help, Sinn Féin won the regional elections in May 2022 at a delicate moment for the province, with Brexit as a great threat to the coexistence of republicans and unionists in the always fragile power-sharing government.
He did so with a speech that was attractive to his bases and moderate to many Northern Irish people who do not consider the reunification of the island to be a priority now, also in tune with a new generation that has grown up with the peace process.
O’Neill, a single mother at 16, is described by her classmates as a tenacious and pragmatic politician, concerned with highlighting current problems, such as the cost of living or healthcare, but without forgetting important issues for the community. nationalist-Catholic, such as the defense of the Gaelic language and other signs of Irish identity.
The ghost of the United Kingdom leaving the European Union (EU) continues to appear on its agenda for the future, since it remains to be seen whether the pact signed by the pro-British Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) with London to restore the Government It calms the fears of unionism and gives stability to regional politics.
This issue has, however, two sides for nationalists, as they see Brexit – rejected by the majority of the Northern Irish electorate in the 2016 referendum – as an opportunity to promote their historic objective of reunifying the island of Ireland through now the democratic way.
The former president of Sinn Féin, Gerry Adams, has assured that O’Neill belongs to the new generation that will guide the party towards its goals in the coming years, whose success depends on his ability to attract the vote of Northern Irish people who are still wary of a paramilitary past.
In this sense, the new chief minister represents a republican movement with a friendlier face, in which a group of leaders has emerged who have not been directly linked to the IRA, as was the case with Adams or McGuinness, who died in 2017.
Although her father, Brendan Doris, was imprisoned for belonging to the IRA and her uncle Paul Doris chaired an organization that raised funds for the cause, Michelle became involved in politics and the peace process at the age of 21.
Born in the small town of Clonoe, in the border county of Tyrone, she abandoned her studies as an accounting technician to join the party in 1998, the year of the signing of the Good Friday agreement, the text that put an end to the past armed conflict.
Between 2005 and 2011 she held the seat vacated by her father on Dungannon and South Tyrone County Council and in 2010 became the first woman to lead that local government body.
By then, he had also won a seat in the Home Rule Assembly in the 2007 regional elections and in 2011 he assumed the Agriculture and Rural Development portfolio in the Belfast Government.
After the 2016 regional elections, he controlled the Ministry of Health for a year, from which he tried to promote an ambitious modernization plan that clashed, however, with the neoliberal theses of the DUP.
In 2018 she became vice president of Sinn Féin, as “number two” to its president, Mary Lou McDonald – based in the Republic of Ireland – and between 2020 and 2022 she was the Northern Irish deputy chief minister intermittently due to the suspensions she has suffered. the power-sharing government.
