WEST BELFAST:WEST BELFAST is likely to be the only constituency with entirely nationalist representation after polling day on May 6th. Unionists, if they could organise themselves, have enough potential voters to take a seat for either the DUP or UUP, but disorganisation and apathy are the problems.
There are enough unionists in this constituency, which takes in the loyalist Shankill, to elect one unionist but most elections not enough of them bother to vote.
In 2003, the DUP scrambled home Diane Dodds for the sixth seat. But she couldn’t hold it against the Sinn Féin blitzkrieg four years later. Ms Dodds is now an MEP and the DUP candidate this time is Brian Kingston, a Belfast city councillor, while the UUP is running Bill Manwaring, who works with the charity Fasa, which deals with suicide and substance abuse.
With hard canvassing and careful vote management it is just about possible one of them could be returned. But nobody believes it will happen.
No shortage of motivation with Sinn Féin. For the first time since 1982, Gerry Adams will not be on the ticket in either Stormont or Westminster elections.
But his absence is unlikely to upset the huge Sinn Féin vote here. The party has five candidates and is likely to win five seats. The other seat seems certain to go to the outgoing SDLP Minister for Social Development Alex Attwood.
Sinn Féin are vote management masters in this constituency. In the last Assembly election in 2007 Gerry Adams topped the poll, but he didn’t lose the run of himself. He won 6,029 votes, with Sue Ramsey taking 4,715, Paul Maskey 4,368, Jennifer McCann 4,265 and Fra McCann 4,254. It was impressive.
Sinn Féin do this by dividing out the constituency and instructing voters in which order they should mark their voting papers
The party is running its four outgoing candidates and Pat Sheehan – viewed as a “coming man” – is a former hunger-striker who was co-opted on to the Assembly to replace the Sinn Féin president when he opted to sit in the Dáil for Louth.
