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WORLD NEWSMonday 29 February 2016
Ireland’s divided lawmakers mull possible pact, 2nd election
SHAWN POGATCHNIK Gael would finish a few Sinn Fein party leader Gerry Adams, centre, celebrates with supporters after being elected the
Associated Press lawmakers stronger than representative for Louth at the count centre in Dundalk, Ireland, Sunday, Feb. 28, 2016. Counts
DUBLIN (AP) — Lawmak- the party’s political nem- under Ireland’s complex proportional representation system continue Sunday to fill Ireland’s par-
ers in Ireland expressed a esis Fianna Fail. But neither liament.
sense of shellshock and di- would be able to form a
vision Sunday over whether parliamentary majority with (AP Photo Peter Morrison)
the country’s next govern- any other single party, only
ment should be a historic each other. followed Ireland’s 1922 in- out forming a partnership ick independents hostile to
alliance of age-old foes — Voters disgusted by Ire- dependence from Britain. if government stability re- both establishment parties.
or whether there should be land’s 2008 economic col- Between them, they have quires this. Few workable The nationalist Sinn Fein
a second election. lapse, 2010 international led every Irish government alternatives look available party finished in third place
With two-thirds of winners bailout and years of auster- — and have never shared in a parliament increasing- with a somewhat disap-
declared in the race to fill ity deemed necessary to power with each other. ly crowded with untested pointing 13.8 percent share
a 158-member parliament, repair the damage threw But neither side has ruled micro-parties and maver- of the popular vote.q
the new political land- their support in Friday’s
scape looked like the most election to a dizzying array
fractured in Irish history. of anti-government voices.
The two perennial centrist For the first time in Irish elec-
heavyweights — governing toral history,
Fine Gael and opposition
Fianna Fail — remained vir- the combined popular
tually neck and neck, with vote for Fianna Fail and
Fine Gael winners of 31 par- Fine Gael slid below 50 per-
liamentary seats, Fianna cent.
Fail 30. The two parties evolved
Analysts forecast that Fine from opposite sides of the
cut-throat civil war that
Hungary’s Orban:
EU leaders don’t want to stop the migrants
PABLO GORONDI missing,” Orban said in his Orban said he had asked
Associated Press annual speech about the his interior and defense
BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) state of the country. ministers to prepare to
— Europe has the ability to Orban described the EU re- build new defenses on the
stop the flow of migrants sponse to the migrant cri- Romanian border.
reaching the continent but sis as “absurd” and com- “We will teach Brussels, the
its leaders have no plans pared EU leadership to the human traffickers and the
to do so, Hungary’s prime captain of a ship about to migrants that Hungary is
minister declared Sunday. collide who spends time sovereign country,” Orban
Prime Minister Viktor Orban “designating the non- told an audience of stead-
has been at the forefront smoking lifeboats instead fast supporters who often
of those rejecting the refu- of trying to avoid the colli- interrupted his speech with
gees and asylum-seekers sion.” applause.
flooding into Europe due to “Europe’s future is endan- Orban declared that mass
conflicts in Syria, Iraq and gered primarily not by migration was a “danger”
Afghanistan. Hungary last those who want to come that put at risk Hungary’s
year built razor-wire fences here, but by those political, achievements of the last
on its borders with Serbia economic and intellectual few years and was not an
and Croatia to stop the mi- leaders who are trying to answer to Europe’s prob-
grants from freely entering transform Europe in opposi- lems. “We cannot solve the
the country — moves that tion to the European peo- demographic problems of
altered the flow of migrants ple,” Orban said, blaming the undeniably dwindling
across Europe. German Chancellor Ange- and aging European popu-
“It is bad enough that Brus- la Merkel’s welcoming re- lation with the Muslim world
sels cannot organize Eu- sponse to refugees as one without losing our lifestyle,
rope’s defense, but worse of the factors responsible security and ourselves,” Or-
is that even the intention is for the crisis. ban said.q
