It’s been a very strange experience watching the elections in Northern Ireland from this side of the Atlantic. First of all it’s been difficult to do so, as, for various reasons, when I’m not at work, it’s tricky to get constant access to the internet (hard to believe in NYC I know, but true). But also because the delays in the count meant the time-difference was even more marked for me. And then there’s that sense that you want to exclaim to someone here about this or that result, but of course it doesn’t really mean anything to anyone here.
The Queen of Manhattan is wading through application forms for all these consultancy jobs here, which use phrases like ‘determine the level of capacity building’ and ‘monitor the gender balance in democratic governance’, and I suddenly realised that that’s what I’ve been doing – monitoring the democratic governance in Northern Ireland! It looks, as I think we all suspected, like a fairly un-spectacular result in terms of changes to the status quo. It seems a shame that in an campaign which had so many independents, so few were elected. And that also meant some casualties among the more established MLAs – it will be a great loss to the Assembly that Dawn Purvis lost her seat. In terms of the number of women MLAs, it’s good to see some new faces, but 20 or so women out of 108 MLAs is still not ideal.
One small aside, one of my colleagues is called Gerry Adams, which still has me pricking my ears up every time someone says her name, but she is very different to the bearded President of Sinn Fein – she’s a statuesque black African-America.