John O’Dowd to stand for vice-president of Sinn Féin

Sinn Féin's deputy leader and head of the party in Northern Ireland, Michelle O'Neill, is to face a challenge at the party's ardfheis in Derry in November.

Upper Bann assembly member John O’Dowd, a former minister of education in the Northern Executive, confirmed at the weekend that he is to stand against Ms O’Neill for the post of vice-president of Sinn Féin.

“I can confirm I will be seeking nominations for leas-uachtarán of Sinn Féin as we approach the ardfheis and the annual election of party leadership. I look forward to the debate across the party and island,” he said.

Mr O’Dowd’s move comes in the wake of Sinn Féin’s poor performance in the European and local council elections in the Republic in May.

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Mr O’Dowd, who is 52, has senior standing within Sinn Féin, and would be viewed as a threat to Ms O’Neill, the assembly member for mid-Ulster who took over from the late Martin McGuinness as the party’s northern leader when he stood down in January 2017.

Mr O’Dowd has stated that his politics were defined by the 1981 Maze hunger strikes in which 10 men died.

The former chef, a native of Banbridge, Co Down was first elected to the Northern Assembly in 2003. He served as minister for education from 2011 until 2016.

Another measure of his prominence within Sinn Féin is reflected in the fact that when Mr McGuinness unsuccessfully ran for the Irish presidency in 2011, Mr O'Dowd was selected to stand in for him as deputy first minister. He held that post for six weeks alongside DUP first minister Peter Robinson.

Seeking re-election

Ms O’Neill made clear at the weekend she would defend her position. “Sinn Féin is a democratic party and I welcome democratic debate and choice within the party. I will, therefore, seek re-election as leas-uachtarán of our party at the forthcoming ardfheis in Derry,” she said. “I will ask the party membership to endorse my record by re-electing me.”

Ms O’Neill said the leadership was “fully focused on the threat of Brexit across the whole island and safeguarding the peace and progress of the past 21 years”.

“I am fully committed to this work and to building Sinn Féin as a national political movement for Irish unity and an agreed Ireland,” she added.

Meanwhile, Mary Lou McDonald, who took over from Gerry Adams as party president in 2018, in marking the 25th anniversary of the IRA ceasefire said that now was "the time to plan and prepare for national reunification and to engage in dialogue and discussion to define and agree our future in a new and united Ireland".

“The ceasefire and the peace process that followed asserted the primacy of politics and the rights of citizens. The actions of the IRA demonstrated that political differences are not intractable and conflict need not be inevitable,” she said on Saturday.

“There remains more to do to realise the opportunities that developed from the IRA ceasefire, to realise the potential of the Good Friday Agreement and to build the process of reconciliation,” she added.

“There are some in the leadership of political unionism who continue to oppose equality and power-sharing, and their actions eventually toppled the power-sharing arrangements,” said Ms McDonald.

“We now face the prospect of Brexit and the potential of a return to the physical borders of the past. Rights that are enjoyed in the South, and in Britain, remain denied to citizens in the North. There remain communities across the island that have not had their fair share.

“I remain convinced that all of these issues can be, and will be, resolved and our recent history demonstrates that with real political leadership no political issue is impossible to resolve.”