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(by Ed Moloney, Sunday Tribune)
The all-island referenda on the Belfast Agreement have produced the best chance of political stability in Northern Ireland for thirty years with a resounding 71.1% Yes vote in the North and an expected 95% endorsement in the Republic.The key Yes vote in the North was apparently achieved when around 160,000 people who normally ignore electoral contests came out to vote for the first time in support of the Good Friday deal.
Some 951,845 people turned out to vote, representing almost 81% of the electorate, a turnout widely believed to be one of the largest, if not the largest in the histoty of Northern Ireland. It compares to a 67% turnout only a year ago at the Westminster general election.
676,930 people voted Yes and 274,892 voted against the Agreement and these figures immediately sparked a bitter debate between rival Unionists about which camp had secured the majority of Unionist votes.
A visibly relieved looking UUP leader David Trimble hailed the result as "a defeat for the Paisley-McCartney gang" and went on to appeal to the DUP leader to work the new Assembly constructively. The result copperfastens his leadership of the Ulster Unionists and poses problems for the five rebel MP's and the equivocating Jeffrey Donaldson.
No campaigners counter-claimed that most Unionists had supported them. The DUP leader Ian Paisley claimed on UTV that 56% of Unionists had voted No while his deputy Peter Robinson predicted a larger No vote at June 25th's Assembly poll. "There is no way these extra voters will come out for that election. This was a peacenik, one-off vote", he claimed.
A judgement on who is right is almost impossoble to make in the absence of a constituency breakdown. Based on the 1997 Westminster poll figures the No camp said that a 26% No vote would represent a majority of Unionists, but Unionist Yes campaigners maintained that a 65% Yes translated into a Unionist majority.
The answer to this puzzle lies in the identity of the 160,000 extra voters who came out last Friday. At this stage nobody is in a position to say whether they were mostly new Nationalist voters or Unionists who traditionally stayed at home at election time or a mixture of both.
Whatever the truth, it is clear that substantial opposition to the Agreement from Unionists exists.
An RTE exit poll, which proved accurate in relation to the overall result, claimed that 99% of Catholics voted Yes. If that is true then the overwhelming bulk of the 275,000 No vote must be Unionists.
Assuming that few of the No voters were disgruntled Nationalists the 275,000 voters who opposed to the Agreement compares to the UUP vote of 258,000 at last year's British general election and a combined UUP-DUP vote of 366,000 at the same poll.
Despite that, the failure of the No camp to pass the the crucial 30% barrier must be a major disappointment to Ian Paisley, Peter Robinson and Bob McCartney. They now face the prospect of their opponents in the Trimble camp seizing the psychological advantage to build a momentum for the Assembly election.
No campaign sources have confirmed that talks are under way involving prominent members of David Trimble's UUP, the DUP and Bob McCartney's UK Unionists to seek agreement to stand in the Assembly poll under the single United Unionist banner.
In sharp contrast to No disappointment, the Yes supporters were celebrating what they saw not just as a significant endorsement of the peace agreement but an equally resounding setback for the Unionist No camp, in particular the DUP leader Ian Paisley. "They should give up graciously", declared Billy Hutchinson of the Progressive Unionist Party.
SDLP sources noted the irony of the date of yesterday's result, only five days short of the 24th anniversary of the fall of the Sunningdale Agreement upon which much of the Belfast Agreement is modelled.
The result, which was warmly welcomed by both governments, now opens the way for the Belfast Agreement to be implemented. A new Northern Assembly with full devolution of powers, a governing power-sharing Executive, a North-South Ministerial Council and a new British-Irish Council to replace the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement will now, in theory at least, be set up.
The referendum campaign and result have had important implications for the future of Unionism but it may be that Irish Republicanism will undergo the greatest changes because of yesterday's results in both parts of the island.
In what is arguably the first all-Ireland expression of opinion since 1918 yesterday's resounding Yes votes will be used as a powerful weapons against Republican dissidents who persist with armed struggle. Both main dissident groups, the Continuity and 'Real' IRA's have declared their determination to continue violence despite yesterday's results.
The Yes votes will be interpreted as not only a current expression of the will of the Irish people but a result that replaces the 1918 general election as the IRA's mandate for using physical force against the British presence in Ireland.
Republicans in Sinn Féin and the Provisional IRA have also signed up to a deal which enshrines the need for Unionist consent to Irish unity as the guiding principle of all constitutional political parties and governments in both parts of Ireland.
In one of the most remarkable political metamorphoses in recent Irish history yesterday's votes are the end result of a process whose success depended on Sinn Féin and the IRA giving up defining ideological ground in the knowledge that it could probably never be recovered.
Yesterday's vote is also the successful climax of a process that has its origins nearly twelve years ago when the then Taoiseach, Charles Haughey decided to open up a secret channel to the Sinn Féin leader, Gerry Adams, in response to overtures from the west Belfast-based Redemptorist priest, Fr Alex Reid.
The cast involved in subsequent years as the process developed and flowered was impressive: Martin Mansergh, Sean O hUiginn, Albert Reynolds, John Major, John Bruton, Bill Clinton, Bertie Ahern, Mo Mowlam and Tony Blair.
But the process which led to yesterday's result will be most widely seen as a personal triumph for the SDLP leader John Hume. Not only is the process a vindication of the great political risk he took in publicly opening up dialogue with Gerry Adams but the peace agreement that resulted is modelled on the type of politics long advocated by the SDLP leader.
History however may judge that the person most responsible for yesterday's result is the Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams. Without his support for carving out a political direction for Sinn Féin and the IRA, John Hume and others involved in the process would have been knocking at a closed door.
The record shows that Adams initiated the process and with consummate skill has managed to halt and reverse the Provisional IRA's military machine and persuaded his party to embrace previously heretical notions such as Unionist consent and participation in a Northern assembly. There seems little doubt that history will place Adams alongside de Valera and Collins in the pantheon of constitutional republicans.