Northern Ireland Lawmakers To Vote Next Monday
Mary K. Brunskill - All Headline News Contributor
Belfast, Northern Ireland (AHN) – After over three years of inactivity, Northern Ireland’s legislature took steps to form a Roman Catholic-Protestant administration on Monday, which stems from a goal initiated eight years ago as a Good Friday peace accord. Assembly members convened inside of the Stormont Parliamentary Building for approximately a hour before the meeting was adjourned and the vote to elect a cross-community coalition is scheduled for next Monday. The 108 members stood in silence and prayer at the beginning of the meeting, over the killing of a Catholic teenager who was clubbed to death last week by a Protestant gang. A share of power between Roman Catholic and Protestant sides of the house was supposed to be the focus of new Northern Ireland officials, but the last four-party administration collapsed in October 2002 due to an Irish Republican Army spying scandal. In response, voters rejected the moderates who oversaw the coalition and turned to the political extremes: the Rev. Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionists and Gerry Adams’ Sinn Fein. On Monday the British government said it will permanently dissolve the assembly if the two sides cannot come together by Nov. 24, saying that the public was tired of the financially wasteful deadlock.
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