Backers of N. Ireland Peace Accord Ahead in Vote for Assembly

This province’s first self-rule government in a quarter of a century will have a solid majority of Protestant and Roman Catholic members who support the region’s Good Friday peace agreement, but it will also have a stronger opposition bloc than had been expected, early poll results and projections suggested Friday.

It appeared that the pro-agreement Ulster Unionist Party will garner the most seats in the 108-member Assembly and that its Protestant leader, David Trimble, will most likely become the first minister of Northern Ireland.

But bitter divisions among Protestant unionists and defections to the “no” camp mean that Trimble will have less of a mandate than he had hoped for and that he and other advocates of the agreement will have more trouble implementing the deal designed to end 30 years of sectarian violence in the province.

“It is enough to enable us to move forward,” Trimble said of the results trickling in. “But we will have the dead weight of people who have difficulty moving into the future.”

With Protestants in disarray, Catholic nationalists turned out in force to vote for Northern Ireland’s first elected government since the British imposed direct rule on the region in 1972.

John Hume’s moderate Social Democratic and Labor Party picked up so many new voters that it apparently upset the Ulster Unionists’ claim to be the largest political party in Northern Ireland.

Early results showed Hume’s nationalist party with about 22% of the vote to Trimble’s 21%. This was more of a psychological boost for Hume than an electoral triumph because he is not expected to garner as many Assembly seats as Trimble in the complex vote by district.

Sinn Fein, the political arm of the Irish Republican Army, got its largest vote yet, apparently guaranteeing party leader Gerry Adams a place on the 12-member executive Cabinet with Trimble and Hume.

“We said our vote would go up and it has,” a buoyant Adams said after his election was announced for one of the six seats in nationalist West Belfast. “Nationalists are resurgent. . . . We have a deal and now have to implement that deal. People want to see me and others taking our places in all of the institutions.”

The biggest surprise of the election was the strong early support for the Rev. Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionist Party and other virulent opponents of the peace agreement.

After the Good Friday accord was approved by 71% of Northern Ireland’s voters last month, many observers predicted Paisley’s imminent political demise.

Instead, he and other naysayers appear to have picked up support from Trimble dissidents.

The peace agreement, crafted by eight political parties and backed by the British and Irish governments, is a delicately balanced attempt to reconcile the desire of Protestant unionists to remain in the United Kingdom and the dream of Catholic nationalists to be united with the Irish Republic.

The deal calls for Northern Ireland to remain in the United Kingdom unless a majority decides otherwise. Meanwhile, Protestants and Catholics are to share power in the new government that will take over day-to-day rule from the British and establish institutional links to both the Irish Republic and the rest of Great Britain.

Paisley opposes allowing Sinn Fein “terrorists” into the government and has said he believes that the accord will lead to a united Ireland. He has said his party will be “the savior of the union” inside the Assembly.

At several ballot-counting centers, Paisley supporters heckled Ulster Unionists, underlining the deep Protestant divisions.

“They thought they had us hamstrung and buried,” Paisley said in his rural North Antrim power base, where he topped the poll. His son, Ian Jr., won a second seat right behind him.

It appeared that Protestant candidates opposed to the peace deal will not secure the 30 seats they had said would allow them to block key elements of the peace agreement, but according to some calculations, they could get as many as 29 seats, which would leave Trimble vulnerable to further defections from nervous Protestants.

The agreement requires a majority of Protestant and Catholic votes on all key decisions and is set up so that if one part is not implemented, the whole deal collapses. For example, if the North-South Council that nationalists want to coordinate policies with Dublin is not established, the Assembly will be dissolved.

Northern Ireland briefly attempted a cross-community government in 1973, but it dissolved after five months in the face of huge labor strikes by Protestants who feared that it would bring about a united Ireland. Trimble was one of the leading opponents of that power-sharing agreement.

The Ulster Unionists’ disappointing showing prompted angry finger-pointing in its ranks.

Party spokesman Ken Maginnis blamed the “public display of dissent” by some members who opposed the agreement, while dissenters blamed the party’s backslide on its leadership and the peace deal.

Political analysts offered a variety of reasons for the decline, including the fact that Protestant voters had seven unionist parties to choose from.

Voter turnout was about 69%, compared with a record 81% in last month’s referendum on the peace accord. Bad weather, voter fatigue and the World Cup soccer matches were blamed.

The total Protestant vote appeared to be about the same as in previous elections, while the Catholic vote has steadily increased.

Official election results are not expected until today because of the large number of candidates--296--and the complicated “proportional representation” system. It allowed voters to list their candidates in order of preference in each district; if the first-choice candidate does not need the vote for election, it shifts to the No. 2 pick and so on. This also means that a party could win a higher or lower percentage of seats than its share of first-preference votes suggests.

Six winners will be declared in each of the 18 electoral districts.

With more than half of the results in, a BBC computer projected that pro-agreement Protestants and Catholics together will have a majority of at least 80 seats in the Assembly--another indication that most people in Northern Ireland want the peace deal to work.

Trimble’s Ulster Unionists were expected to win 29 seats and the pro-agreement Progressive Unionist Party two seats, according to the BBC projection. The Catholic SDLP was considered likely to win 25 seats and Sinn Fein 17 seats after scoring 17.6% of the vote. At least seven other seats were likely to go to supporters of the accord from independent parties and groups.

Paisley’s party, meanwhile, was forecast to get 21 seats, and another opposition party, led by Robert McCartney, five seats.

Earlier, political analysts on Ulster television and the Irish RTV Network suggested that the “no” camp could garner as many as 29 seats.

The Assembly is expected to meet for the first time next week to pick a first minister and his deputy.

Its calendar beyond that is unclear and subject to political negotiations. Given his slim Protestant majority, Trimble might want to move slowly and avoid being seated with Gerry Adams, while Adams will be pushing to get on with business to satisfy his constituency.