Sinn Fein is the Irish nationalist party that seeks a united homeland. The party is active on both sides of the border and had, until the end of last year, been led by just one man since 1983: Gerry Adams. Yet this month has seen a woman take to the helm; for the first time in the organisation’s history. The times, it seems, they are a changin’. Many have pinned their hopes on Mary Lou McDonald to bring Sinn Fein to younger generations. Indeed, the new party president has backed a change to the law that would see abortion legalised. The matter is to be decided by an Irish referendum later this year. But that isn’t the only shake-up that McDonald may have in mind. For although she was sure to speak of Adams in glowing terms, calling him her political mentor as well as an inspirational leader and great friend — the new party president did, nevertheless, draw a line under the past. McDonald was firm when she said: “There is no value in re-fighting the battles of the past; the war is long over . . . We don’t have to agree on the past . . . we only have to agree that the past is never repeated.” This was a not so unveiled reference to the sectarian violence, known as The Troubles, that haunted Northern Ireland for decades and which was born of conflict over the constitutional status of the territory. The unionists and the majority Protestant population wanted to remain under British control. The republicans and nationalists as well as the Catholic minority had in their sights joining the Republic of Ireland in the south. The Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) — of which Sinn Fein was the political wing — was the main republican paramilitary organisation in Northern Ireland. Its objective was the withdrawal of British troops and Irish unification. And it saw armed resistance as the only means towards this end. Gerry Adams has always denied being a member of the IRA; a claim that remains disputed to this day in certain quarters. But even his opponents credit him with steering the party away from violence — a process that is said to have taken close to two decades. Be that as it may, McDonald represents Sinn Fein’s first ever leader to have no direct links to the bloodshed. There may or may not be a message somewhere here for Pakistan in terms of its militant-mainstreaming project. The IRA, after all, called a ceasefire back in 1997 following Sinn Fein’s re-admission into peace process and eventually downed arms in 2005 under international supervision. Thus Pakistan’s civilian leadership must take advantage of the presidential promulgation that has seen Hafiz Saeed declared a terrorist and push for an international verification process to determine if his cadres and other so-called reformed assets having actually downed arms. This is a mechanism that the ruling party should have put in place as soon as it had been intimated about the mainstreaming project; regardless of it getting on board or not. For the country must come first. Published in Daily Times, February 15th 2018.