Belfast Elects First Sinn Fein Lord Mayor

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Thursday, June 06, 2002

Belfast Elects First Sinn Fein Lord Mayor

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Sinn Fein, the IRA's political ally, took the symbolic top job in Northern Ireland's capital on Wednesday when a hardline republican won the figurehead post of lord mayor in the face of bitter Protestant opposition.

Belfast city council voted 26-25 at its annual meeting to give the job to Alex Maskey, a 50-year-old former amateur boxer, after the small cross-community Alliance Party swung the election in his favor.

The vote came amid escalating sectarian tensions in east Belfast, where several people were shot during weekend rioting between opposing Protestant and Catholic mobs.

For much of the 20th century Belfast symbolized northern Protestant loyalty to the British crown and rejection of the Catholic-dominated Irish Republic to the south. More than 3,000 people died in three decades of sectarian violence in the North.

The new mayor, twice interned by the British in the 1970s for his republican sympathies and later the target of several assassination attempts, could hardly disguise his delight.

"I am delighted, honored and proud to become Belfast Lord Mayor," he told Reuters after his election.

"I will be fair, impartial and strive to truly represent all the people of Belfast," Maskey told Reuters.

Unionist politicians walked out in protest after Maskey was elected, before returning to the Chamber a short time later.

Defeated Protestant candidate Chris McGimpsey, who won only 15 votes, said of Maskey's election: "This is a disgraceful decision, rewarding an organization that has been involved in the destruction of Belfast over the past 30 years."

McGimpsey said his pro-British Ulster Unionist Party would not work with Sinn Fein or Maskey.

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