Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams steps down as party chief
By Ed O’Loughlin NEW YORK TIMES FEBRUARY 10, 2018
DUBLIN — Gerry Adams tried to turn the page on a troubled period in Irish history Saturday when he passed the presidency of Sinn Fein to his deputy, Mary Lou McDonald, who becomes the party’s first female leader.
Adams’s retirement after 34 years as party leader is seen as an opportunity for Sinn Fein, until recently the political wing of the banned Provisional Irish Republic Army, to reposition itself closer to the political mainstream in southern Ireland.
It has a strong chance of entering a coalition government for the first time after the next election.
Unlike Adams, 69, who came to prominence in his native West Belfast in the early 1970s, during the worst days of Northern Ireland’s sectarian Troubles, the Dublin-born McDonald, 48, has no personal links to what Irish republicans call “the armed struggle” but which opponents of the IRA denounce as terrorist violence.
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