IT could only happen in Belfast. Celebrating their success in the local elections, loyalists organised a cavalcade past City Hall where flags of the Ulster Volunteer Force, Ulster Defence Association, Red Hand Commando and Ulster Freedom Fighters were waved from car windows. Election posters were used to black out car registration numbers.
As this exultant and rather chilling procession made its way past the seat of local government, a young married couple was having a photograph taken in the grounds of the City Hall.
Only a set of railings separated the normal and everyday from the world of paramilitarism and terror. Newly weds on one sides, paramilitary supporters on the other and nobody, including the police, batted an eyelid.
But instead of celebrating some shooting or bombing, the paramilitary supporters were marking their successes at the ballot box. The Progressive Unionist Party, which is close to the UVF, now has six council seats, and the Ulster Democratic Party, linked with the UDA, has four. Previously they held one each. They are heading down a road which Sinn Fein took more than a decade ado.
Mr Alex Maskey recalled how in 1983 he was the sole Sinn Fein representative on Belfast City Council. At the time Sinn Fein activists were being assassinated in a campaign similar to the Phoenix programme in Vietnam. Mr Maskey himself was shot and wounded 10 years ago this week.
When the party's councillors got up to speak, unionist opponents blew trumpets or sprayed pesticides into their faces. The word on the mat was not "Welcome but a familiar AngloSaxon expletive.
Sinn Fein has now achieved more through the ballot box than the entire total of bombs and bullets expended by the republican movement since the Treaty.
Belfast, the unionist citadel, has been wrested from the grip of the mainstream unionist parties. Sinn Fein and the Ulster Unionist Party are on an equal footing as the two largest parties on the council, with 13 seats each. There have been numerous allegations of vote fraud. Northern Ireland's chief electoral officer, Mr Patrick Bradley, told BBC Radio 4 he thought there were "grounds for believing that the allegations are true" but he refused to name any individual party.
Most independent observers believe vote fraud is a feature of Northern Ireland's politics. A nationalist MP was once congratulated on his election with a message implying votes had been cast for him in the name of deceased electors: "The fools, the fools, the fools, they have left us our Fenian dead."
It may be that certain parties have acquired a level of expertise in vote stealing which they did not possess during previous elections, but it may also be that something is stirring in the soul of Northern Ireland.
Whole segments of the population which previously looked to the gun as their mode of either liberation or defence may now be looking to the democratic process, with all its promise and delay, its achievements and setbacks, its occasional boredom and rare moments of triumph.
What happened in Belfast is being seen, to quote one newspaper, as "a massive psychological blow to unionism". Dr Chris McGimpsey of the UUP does not share that interpretation: "That's predicated on the view that the Alliance Party is a nationalist party and it's not."
He said prounion parties still had a majority on the council, but the interpretation of the Belfast result as a major blow to unionists is widespread. Other councils have also slipped from their grasp and the political map of Northern Ireland now has large areas shaded in green which only a few days ago were bright orange.
The Sinn Fein president, Mr Gerry Adams, was in no doubt about the significance of the result in Belfast and throughout the North. Relaxing in the sunshine outside the City Hall, with a group of loyalists to his left and a line of armed RUC officers to his right, he gave his interpretation.
"There's a new era. We are going in with a very clear view that the institutions of local government should reflect the mandates of all of the parties. As far as Belfast is concerned, it's the beginning of a new Belfast when all of the citizens should have ownership of all of its institutions."
There would have to be a Sinn Fein mayor as part of a rotation agreement between the parties. Mr Adams dismissed the vote fraud charge as "a whinge". Sinn Fein would be able to work with the PUP. "I don't see why not."The SDLP director of communications, Mr Conall McDevitt, asked if the party would countenance a Sinn Fein lord mayor, replied: "I don't want to talk about the personalities or particular positions that may emerge during the course of a negotiation, but I think we have to have a system of government that definitely recognises the respective strengths of different parties.
Mr Steve McBride of the Alliance Party said he and his party colleagues could be seeking meetings with the SDLP and the UUP. "We're going to hold the balance of power. Sinn Fein have a large vote but there's no question of anyone actually doing a deal with them as long as the threat of violence continues to hang over us."
There was a significant transfer, estimated at 35 per cent, from SDLP voters to Sinn Fein. The high nationalist turnout was attributed to anger over Drumcree with the RUC defending the Garvaghy Road residents one day and clearing them off the highway the next.
The nationalist perception that the British government had cynically sabotaged the IRA ceasefire was another factor. Several unionists explained the poor turnout from their community by saying unionists didn't see much point in voting because London never listened to them these days.
It seems disappointment with Downing Street has galvanised the nationalist population and caused unionists to retreat into their shell. Role reversal is the order of the day in Northern Ireland.