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Ireland gets 1st president from north

 
Published Nov. 1, 1997|Updated Oct. 2, 2005

Mary McAleese swept past four other candidates Friday to become Ireland's next president, the second woman to win the post and the first president from across the border in Northern Ireland.

Campaigning on a pledge to "build bridges" between the peoples and faiths of the island, McAleese won 45.2 percent of the first-round votes. In the second count, she had a record share of 58.7 percent, according to RTE, the state broadcasting service.

As she arrived at the election center in Dublin Castle on Friday night with Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, McAleese, 46, said she wanted to give the nation "a really warm promise . . . to be the very best president that I possibly can be."

McAleese was able to win even though as a resident of Northern Ireland she wasn't eligible to vote. The republic's constitution claims the province as part of the republic, thus enabling someone like McAleese to be elected to office in the south.

Her victory dramatized a fundamental reality of the conflict in Northern Ireland: Catholics north and south regard themselves as Irish, regardless of the partition that divides the island. While McAleese crossed the border to run, residents of the republic reached north to elect her.

She now succeeds Mary Robinson, who resigned in September to become U.N. Commissioner for Human Rights.

The presidency has little practical power and has no involvement in the multi-party peace talks.