Irish Gov't Ousted In Landslide Election
The New York Times reports:
LONDON — Ireland ousted its discredited government on Saturday, electing new leaders who pledged to restore faith in the country after the trauma of a calamitous economic collapse.
With most of the votes counted after the general election on Friday, a coalition government of the center-right Fine Gael and the Labour Party was on track to win a comfortable majority in Parliament.
The next prime minister is likely to be Enda Kenny, a career Fine Gael politician who is expected to calm the turmoil of the past few years.
“I intend to send out a clear message around the world that this country has given my party a massive endorsement to provide stable and strong government with a clear agenda,” Mr. Kenny said after winning his parliamentary seat.
Fianna Fail, which has run the government for 14 years, suffered its worst showing in its more than 80-year history. It won 78 seats in 2007; this time, it was on course to win as few as 25 out of a total of 166. Of the 47 parliamentary seats in Dublin, only the seat held by Brian Lenihan, who served as finance minister, was set to go to Fianna Fail.
The results by late Saturday showed that Fine Gael was expected to win 76 seats and Labour 36. The Green Party was expected to lose all six of the seats it now holds, and Sinn Fein was on course to take 12 seats — one of them to be held by Gerry Adams, the party’s president, who resigned from his posts in the British Parliament and in the Belfast Assembly in Northern Ireland to run in the Irish Republic.
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