SINN Fein voters were marked by their absence from the electoral landscape of Cavan-Monaghan yesterday. A frenetic hour-long search for a voter who helped put Mr Caoimhghin O Caolain into the Dail on a peace mandate failed. Not one was to be found.
Stopping people in Cavan within 24 hours of the IRA killing of two young RUC officers in Lurgan, not one person expressed a preference for Sinn Fein. Their candidate may have topped the poll with all of 11,000 votes just 11 days ago, but indication of that kind of support was strangely absent among the grassroots of the Border counties.
A straw poll of more than 50 people could have been expected to find at least one Sinn Fein supporter, but left The Irish Times to ask: who voted for this man? What could be easily read in faces was acute disappointment and a sense of a more than likely return to days of fear and the backlash threat from across the Border.
"What happened was awful," a Fine Gael voter declared. "We are afraid. We know what loyalists could do in Clones or Carrickmacross." The nearest thing to a Sinn Fein voter was a 23-year-old man from Monaghan who said he gave Mr 6 Caolain a second preference. "I thought if we get a Sinn Fein man into these talks, it would sort matters out quicker."
A farmer from near Monaghan - a town which still knows what loss of life from a bomb is like, even if it was in the mid-1970s - said he was glad he did not vote for him. "I know him. He's a very good worker. He works hard for Monaghan. That was reflected in the number of soldiers who voted for him. I did not vote for him."
Asked to comment on local reaction to the killings, another farmer, Mr Donal McDaid, responded with a question. "How does any one who voted for Sinn Fein in Cavan-Monaghan feel today?" No one was prepared to give him an answer.
Living in Donamoyne, Co Monaghan, four miles from the Border as the crow flies, he said people, were "absolutely despondent" particularly in the context of Sinn Fein going to the electorate and telling voters that "a vote for them is a vote for peace".
Life had increasingly become one of cross-community co-operation on the understanding that unity was not an option unless people were united. It was a theme that the Taoiseach-in-waiting, Mr Bertie Ahern, embraced when he later opened the Agriculture and Rural Enterprise `97 show attended by more than 20,000 people. Ironically, the event was staged in Ballyhaise, Co Cavan, to promote exactly that kind of cross-community co-operation.
In that context, he said, the killings were "a bad setback". A "terrible tragedy in human terms had cast a sad shadow over an event that was designed to build up community support and confidence". Mr Ahern was anxious that cross-Border Leader and partnership programmes would continue undaunted. He left a community daunted and more than a little despondent, where Sinn Fein supporters were mute.
A Fianna Fail voter from Cavan ventured to explain the silence: "I'd say they're, keeping their heads low today.
