N. Ireland prepares for vote
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Ahern (left) with Tony Blair when their attempt to restore power sharing failed in October.
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LONDON, England (CNN) -- Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern has urged the people of Northern Ireland to use their vote in Wednesday's elections for a Northern Ireland Assembly, stressing the importance of restarting the peace process.
The assembly is currently dissolved and the power-sharing executive suspended, with Northern Ireland now under direct rule from London.
The outcome of the vote to fill 108 assembly seats is seen as deciding the next moves in the province's enmeshed political standoff.
Ahern said it was now time for the British and Irish governments to stand back and allow voters to consider their political options.
The electorate should make choices "based on an assessment of their own best interests, the future security and happiness of their children and the overall welfare of wider society in Northern Ireland," the UK Press Association reported him as saying.
Speaking in Dublin, he added: "There is a democratic imperative for the holding of elections.
"I hope that people in Northern Ireland will turn out to vote and that they will do so in large numbers. It is important that they do so."
Ahern said his priority after the elections was to achieve rapid agreement on the setting up of an inclusive executive and to press on with the full implementation of the Good Friday Agreement.
He was echoing an appeal for voters to turn out by British Prime Minister Tony Blair after the Ango-French summit Monday.
Assembly members will be elected under a complex proportional representation system, with six seats up for grabs in each of 18 constituencies.
Voters will mark their ballot papers in order of preference, marking the number one against the candidate they want to see elected, the figure two against their second favorite, a three against their third favorite and so on. Later preferences will decide who wins the final seats in each constituency.
In 1998, when the power-sharing assembly was set up under that year's Good Friday Agreement, the two main loyalist and two main Irish nationalist parties dominated the voting. On the loyalist side, the official unionist party (UUP) won 28 seats, the more hard line Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which opposes the Good Friday Agreement, took 20 seats.
On the nationalist side, the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) won 24 seats and Sinn Fein 18. The moderate Alliance party won 6 seats, with others sharing the remaining 12.
If the DUP becomes the biggest unionist party, it could make the assembly impossible to run, since DUP leaders have refused to sit in the assembly with Sinn Fein, the political ally of the Provisional IRA.
While for weeks support has been expected to grow for the more hard line loyalist and nationalist parties, the DUP and Sinn Fein, analysts said the results were difficult to predict in a fluid electorate.
UUP leader David Trimble and former First Minister of the power sharing executive -- whose party refused to restore power sharing until there was more evidence of IRA arms decommissioning -- insisted the party would not fall behind the rival DUP.
At an election event in south Belfast Monday, the Upper Bann MP was quoted by PA as saying: "I will give you just one prediction. We will not lose a single seat to the DUP and we will make gains."
But Gregory Campbell, of the DUP, countered: "If Mr Trimble is still blissfully unaware of the unionist reaction on the doorsteps, then he is in for a bigger shock than many in his own party would have him believe."
Gerry Adams, the president of Sinn Fein, predicted his party was going to attract preferences for the first time from a "small amount of more far-sighted unionist voters".
Adams told PA that the party would make gains at the expense of the rival nationalist SDLP whose supporters, he claimed, had been put off by their "negative, carping and begrudging campaign against Sinn Fein."
SDLP director of elections Brid Rodgers hit back, insisting her party's core vote remained strong.
"Our campaign to protect the Good Friday Agreement and stop the DUP has hit home with nationalist voters and that is why we will again be the largest nationalist party after the votes are counted," she told PA.
