Brian Cowen travelled to the Armagh village of Crossmaglen on Thursday to open the latest Fianna Fáil office in the North. This follows the setting up of FF forums in Fermanagh, Down and Armagh. Plans are believed to be in place to set up foums in Antrim, Derry and Tyrone in the coming months. FF already have large cummans in the Norths main universities.
All this poses one question. Will they be contesting the 2011 assembly elections? It is of course too early to say but according to one article they are.
“This is about a bottom-up approach and there is no question of us contesting elections in the immediate future,” said a senior Fianna Fáil source yesterday.
As the assembly elections are fought under the Single-Transferable-Vote system, their entry in to the North would not have the effect of vote splitting. Also it would be interesting to see where they would get votes from. Nationalist voters do not have a centre right pro business party to vote for so one would imagine they will take votes from both SF and the SDLP. In 2008 a former Ulster Unionist Councillor and businessman from south Down joined Fianna Fáil so it will be interesting to see how many votes the party can attract from Unionists IF they contest elections next March.
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar