This week we learn of another twist in the tale of Martin McGuinness’s bid for the presidential leadership of the Irish Republic. Sinn Féin recently announced that it would be supporting the Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland in his campaign to replace the current President of the Republic, Mary McAleese.

It didn’t take long, however, for the Conservatives' Lord Tebbit to demand that McGuinness confess all of his past involvements in the Provisional IRA.

This has in turn prompted support for McGuinness from the most unlikely of corners – Jackie McDonald, commander of a section of the proscribed terrorist group the Ulster Defence Association, has attacked Tebbit’s demands. 

Jackie McDonald is the brigadier of the UDA’s feared South Belfast Brigade, a position he has held since the assassination by the IRA of charismatic UDA brigadier John McMichael in 1988. During the Troubles the UDA was the largest of a number of loyalist paramilitary groups, and claims the responsibility for hundreds of deaths over the thirty year period. Bitter enemies of the IRA, the idea that a senior UDA man would support McGuinness’s bid for the Irish Presidency may seem absurd.

Yet McDonald claims he now sees McGuinness as “a man of peace,” and contests that it would be unfair for McGuinness to have to tell the whole truth about his involvement in the Provisional IRA. It is difficult to read McDonald’s real motives. Is he being sincere, or is he perhaps hoping a presidential victory for McGuinness will remove the Republican from Ulster politics for good?

McDonald’s stance may seem surprising, and yet surely the starkest thing to come out of all this is the shadow which is still cast by the sorry events of Ireland’s recent history. On one hand McGuinness has been instrumental in bringing peace to Ulster’s streets, and yet on the other he was for many years a member of an undeniably brutal terrorist organisation. Such a record would certainly exclude him from running in election campaigns in almost any other EU country.
Yet in Ireland, having former criminals in power is now sadly regarded as the norm. It makes sense to have Unionist and Republican figureheads working side by side in Stormont, but can McGuinness really justify his presence in the south too? A reformed man he may be, but how can the spectre of his grim past not follow him over the border? Is he the sort of man the people of the Irish Republic are comfortable to have representing them? Does his presence run the risk of infecting younger generations as-yet free of the stain of the Troubles?

Even more importantly, is McGuinness prepared to take on the responsibility of the Republic? Shrewd and experienced he certainly is, but there are few greater political challenges in Europe at this time than the economically-crippled south of Ireland. Jackie McDonald, in his defence of McGuinness, has also praised the work of the current president, Mary McAleese. Is Northern Ireland’s deputy first minister really ready to fill her shoes?

Sinn Féin seems to think so. Whether the rest of the Republic agrees remains to be seen.