`They not only want to jump on our bandwagon, they are trying to push us off it," said a rueful Sinn Fein senior official after the euphoria of Saturday's vote result made almost everyone a "peacenik".
The official was describing the number of people in Dublin who had approached him with congratulations in the immediate aftermath of the vote, from leading journalists to senior politicians and parties long inimical to Sinn Fein.
"They kept saying `we' did it," he said. "I wanted to ask them what exactly it was `we' did, as many of them made every attempt to drag this down not only when it started but have continued to do so."
He was referring in the first instance to the early years of the Hume-Adams rapprochement, the touchstone of this historic vote, when a concerted media and political campaign of vilification almost poisoned what was then a very delicate plant.
The history of these times will not reflect well on such naysayers. Those who said the referendum would be a disaster must now rejoin their colleagues who predicted equal doom and gloom for the negotiations that led to the Belfast Agreement and the previous batch of crow-eaters who held that all IRA ceasefires definitely would fall asunder. Doubtless, the chorus will soon begin to gather like birds on a wire around the assembly elections, chirping about Armageddon any day now.
It should be obvious by now that such commentators and politicians have all grown too cynical of the fare after 30 years of the Troubles. They have underestimated the determination of the negotiating political parties to get a result. They have also missed the import of the remarkable documents drafted between the British and Irish governments, starting with the Downing Street Declaration and leading up to the Belfast Agreement, which continue to provide an imaginative framework and road map for all that has been achieved.
But Sinn Fein leaders know well that, despite all this progress, the woods are still dark and deep. They believe the pressure over the next month in the run-up to the assembly election will again be borne by them, much of it directed from the same folks congratulating them at the weekend.
They say flatly, however, they have given enough. They have expertly managed a dizzying pace of change unmatched by any other party in modern history, including an IRA ceasefire, getting their followers to accept the revision of Articles 2 and 3, entry to a Northern assembly and agreeing to the Mitchell Principles.
What they most wish to see now is life on the ground in the North changing for the better for nationalists. The equality agenda, the human rights provisions in the agreement, the reform of policing and the scaling back of the military presence would all make a profound difference as to how the agreement is viewed if these issues are honestly tackled by the British government.
They believe such movement should be the quid pro quo for what has been given up by nationalists in this agreement. "Bertie Ahern said it best in his RTE interview after the vote result," said the Sinn Fein official, "when he pointed out that nationalists both South and North have shown remarkable generosity of spirit in this vote, agreeing to do away with many of the most cherished parts of their heritage in order to move this forward.
"People should not mistake what this vote was about. Nationalists voted for an agreement, for no more obstacles, no preconditions, for all the parties sitting down together. The nightmare scenario is if Blair tries somehow to impose such preconditions, at the behest of Trimble before the assembly elections," said the Sinn Fein official.
Of course, another dark cloud is the looming marching season with all its potential for havoc. It appears that Drumcree, rather than the Ormeau Road where there are some encouraging signs, will be the major flashpoint. It will take a George Mitchell to find a workable compromise to defuse that one.
Given that the aborted decision of the parade commissions to reroute Drumcree is known it will be very difficult indeed to persuade Garvaghy Road residents to allow another free pass down their road to the Orange Order.
Because of all that, Sinn Fein doesn't think it will be enough for British or Irish politicians to take laps of honour in the next few weeks celebrating all that has been achieved and allowing the agenda to slow down. They also believe that any tampering with the agreement itself would be utterly disastrous.
They also face other problems. There are some who continue to question Sinn Fein bona fides and who have made little secret of their desire, whether by insistence on decommissioning or some such other undeliverable pretext, to get them out of the assembly. The television coverage the day of the election result, with its heavy emphasis on decommissioning, is an example of what Sinn Fein is expecting to face in the weeks ahead.
It is worth pointing out that nationalists are not insisting on loyalist decommissioning before they can enter the assembly. Given that random Catholics are much more likely to be shot by loyalist gunmen than the other way around, they would have a perfect right to do so.
The IRA equates surrender of weapons without reciprocal demilitarisation on the other side as military surrender. No one is pointing to the estimated £45 million the British security forces have spent on upgrading existing military barracks and police stations since the IRA ceasefires as powerful evidence that, far from winding down, the British military presence is actually booting up.
There are few miracles in Northern Ireland, recent events such as last Friday's vote aside. Dysfunctional societies where thousands have been killed and tens of thousands injured do not blossom overnight into perfect democracies. That is why issues like decommissioning do not exist in a vacuum but must be taken in tandem with many other moves. The changes so far have been dramatic, but there are more obstacles ahead.
The best we must expect is that the parties stumble over them but don't fall down. It is not an endless obstacle course, however, and the worst of the fences are now well behind this peace process.
Niall O'Dowd is founding publisher of the Irish Voice in New York
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