Major blunder: votes & violence in Ireland.

The Provisional Irish Republican Army ended its cease-fire on February 9 by setting off a bomb at London's Canary Wharf that killed two people and injured dozens. A week later a twenty-one-year-old immigrant from County Wexford, blew himself up along with the bus he was riding on. The bombings were atrocious and counterproductive.

The precipitating excuse was British Prime Minister John Major's call at the end of January for elections in Northern Ireland before all-party negotiation could begin. Although these negotiations are deemed the essential goal in the January 22 Mitchell report (from the international body chaired by former U. S. Senator George Mitchell), Major seized upon the brief mention of elections (fifty-sixth out of sixty-two proposals) to push his current position that elections must precede talks. In response, John Hume (deeply committed to nonviolent and constitutional democratic methods) of Northern Ireland's Social Democratic and Labor Party expressed enormous frustration at the new roadblock Major had introduced into the peace process. He accused Major of sacrificing the chance for peace by catering to Ulster Unionists on the election issue, in order to preserve his own leadership.

Major's demand was seen by Hume and others as an attempt to establish another precondition to all-party peace talks, violating the spirit of the negotiated understandings in the lead-up to the cease-fire. Unfortunately the reaction of the Provisional Irish Republican Army arose from that same sense of frustration and betrayal. Now it has cost lives in London.

Americans, generally supportive of democratic electoral processes, might ask why the suggestion of elections was not welcomed by Irish democratic politicians, such as Hume and the coalition government in Dublin.

Their great suspicion of the British proposal is based on current practice and the memory of past electoral practices in Northern Ireland. The traditional Nationalist position is that the last valid election was held in 1918 when voters from the entire island made up the electorate. A Dail was elected with a majority (1.2 out of 1.5 million) favoring some form of independence from Britain. But after the 1921 treaty, Northern Ireland was "gerrymandered" into existence by the British, dividing it from the "South."

Because at the time, a vote in the nine counties of Ulster might not have insured a Unionist majority committed to remaining in the "United Kingdom," three counties--Donegal, Monaghan, and Cavan--were left outside the border and thus eliminated from the vote for both the Northern Ireland (Stormont) and British (Westminster) Parliament. In fact, in-sofar as possible, lines were drawn to ensure a Unionist (or at least Protestant) majority in each of the remaining counties and in each local governing body. The City of Derry (Londonderry) Council is the most frequently cited example, having twice as many Unionist as Nationalist councillors, despite a Nationalist (or Catholic) majority overall.

This gerrymandered system lasted well into the 1970s and is still practiced, though with more subtlety. Until 1969, when universal suffrage was introduced in Northern Ireland, the vote was limited to landowners and rate [tax] payers. Thus the Unionists, with approximately two-thirds of the eligible voters, regularly returned ten of the twelve members to Westminster.

This may look like a history too ancient to be relevant, but consider what has happened in the last twenty-five years. Elections of various sorts have been held since the beginning of the troubles in the late '60s. In 1973 proportional representation was tried at the district-council level with a "single transferrable vote" (STV) system. (Voters number the candidates by preference, and as a candidate is either elected or eliminated in each successive count, the voter's second choice receives the transferred vote, and so on down the ballot.) Hopes were high for a Northern Ireland Assembly to be elected by proportional representation, and, in fact, there was a record voter turnout. But the Assembly was sabotaged by the Unionists themselves. Many did not keep election pledges to support the results, making the Assembly and then the associated executive body unworkable. In the spring of 1974 Loyalist paramilitaries brought down the executive and the entire elective conciliatory process by enforcing a general strike cutting off all utilities and services. British security forces did not intervene. At the same time, Loyalist car bombs in Dublin and Monaghan Town in the Republic killed thirty-three and injured well over a hundred.

In 1982 a Westminster proposal for a Northern Ireland Assembly, to which some administrative function for the province would devolve, was rejected by Unionists. However, when the plan passed the House of Commons and elections were to be held, the local Unionist party machines decided to participate and moved into high gear. It was also the first time Sinn Fein took part in elections.

By this time, the Unionists had mastered the STV system of proportional representation. Hard-line Unionists (the UUP, or Ulster Unionist Party; and the DUP, or Democratic Unionist Party) took forty-seven of the seventy-eight seats (60 percent) despite having just about 52 percent of the first-preference votes. A moderate unionist party, the Alliance, with fewer first-preference votes, achieved twice as many seats as Sinn Fein. Both Gerry Adams and Martin McGuiness were elected with three others of their party but did not take their seats in protest. This Assembly suffered on for four years with boycotts by various groupings of parties. In June of 1986 it was dissolved and lan Paisley was evicted along with twenty-one remaining die-hards from the chambers by the Royal Ulster Constabulary police. James Molyneaux, then leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, said that the experience "had made the achievement of any sort of democracy in Northern Ireland virtually impossible." The May 1993 Northern Ireland District Council elections, despite attempted redistricting and the addition of sixteen more council seats than in 1989, managed, as Fortnight magazine commented, "to enhance republican defiance and loyalist paranoia at the same time."

These events are in the minds of the Irish people and of political representatives now struggling for a way toward peace. When Nationalists hear what sounds like a reasonable suggestion for elections before all-party talks can begin, these memories are a source of deep unease.

If that were not enough, there are very practical problems: census undercounts, residency requirements, election-district boundaries, and inadequate election monitoring. On March 22, Major presented a hybrid election proposal: no proportional representation; voting by election district with some at-large voting; and the opportunity to "top-up" the one-hundred participants by giving two places to any party of the leading ten not receiving sufficient votes to gain a place in a forum yet to be established. Voters would mark their party of choice, and the names of potential members would be listed, but not be voted on as individuals. Finally the link between the forum and the all-party negotiations remains obscure.

Hume's SDLP called the plan, "monster raving looney." Paisley say his DUP will split in three to get all the "top-up" votes. These elections are scheduled for May 30. A deadline for the all-party talks had once been set for the end of February. Now the governments are setting a date of June 10. (Sinn Fein's participation is to be contingent upon the reintroduction of a cease-fire.)

Elections rather than leading to all-party talks would seem to be sending them on a detour. Foreign Minister of the Republic, Dick Spring, has suggested talks modeled on the Dayton negotiations for the Balkans. More hope lies in that suggestion than in elections. Talks, then elections, would make more sense.

Loyalist paramilitaries have made it a point to call for calm among their members, even after Canary Wharf. The discipline and forbearance of those Loyalist groups up to this point has been something of a surprise, and also possibly a small sign of hope. The May 30 election could effectively exclude them. They too, need to be at the table for genuine all-party peace negotiaitons.

Seamus O'Shean is the pseudonym of an American observer of Irish politics.