Republican Sinn Féin (RSF) announced yesterday that it is running six candidates in the Assembly elections and will be directly challenging Sinn Féin leaders such as Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness and Pat Doherty.
Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, who formed Republican Sinn Féin after the 1986 Sinn Féin Ardfheis, under the direction of Mr Adams and Mr McGuinness, decided to end its electoral abstentionist policies, said candidates would be campaigning under the banner of "Smash Stormont".
Mr Ó Brádaigh, who is president of RSF, which is linked to the Continuity IRA, accused Mr Adams and Mr McGuinness of abandoning key republican principles such as a rejection of Stormont and the PSNI, and the IRA refusal to decommission.
"They are rapidly becoming indistinguishable from the SDLP and ultimately from unionists, with a small U," he said in west Belfast yesterday.
"What the Provisional leadership is doing is in direct conflict with the 1916 proclamation of the Republic and with the declaration of independence of the first (all-Ireland) Dáil. Their recent decisions also conflict with the high ideals for which so many men and women of all creeds have struggled, suffered and died over the centuries," he added.
Mr Ó Brádaigh, who is not one of the six candidates, said that republicans had a right to bear arms to compel Britain to leave Ireland. "We uphold the right of the Irish people. President Bush, no friend of ours, has said that every country is entitled to defend itself. Well, surely the Irish people are entitled to defend themselves. Are they the only people on the face of the earth that do not enjoy that right?" he added.
He said "when elected" RSF Assembly members would not take their seats. Candidates were receiving a good reception from voters. Republican Sinn Féin is not registered as a party, however, and the RSF party name will not appear alongside the names of the six candidates.
Among the candidates is Joe O'Neill from Bundoran, Co Donegal who was one of the senior Sinn Féin figures who walked away from the party after the 1986 ardfheis. He will challenge Sinn Féin MP Pat Doherty in West Tyrone. He was dismissive of the Adams/McGuinness leadership and believed he had a good chance in the election.
"First of all you have true republicans and the people who sold out republicanism, and that's our former friends. We are asking for the true republicans to come out and uphold this principle of republicanism, which is a free and united Ireland, and non-sectarian," he said.
Former IRA H-Block hunger striker Brendan McLaughlin, who is confined to a wheelchair after suffering a stroke in 1999, is standing against Mr McGuinness in Mid-Ulster. He said the hunger strikers "died for nothing" as a result of Sinn Féin's current policies. Mr McGuinness was not a true republican. "Ireland unfree shall never be at peace," he added.
Former internee during the early 1970s Geraldine Taylor is running against Mr Adams in West Belfast. "The Provos did not solve the problems," she said. "They are now part of the problem by administering British rule here." Former IRA prisoner Michael McManus from Lisnaskea, Co Fermanagh, is standing in Fermanagh South-Tyrone where independent republican Gerry McGeough is also running against Sinn Féin.
Dungiven RSF member Michael McGonigle is standing in East Derry while former prisoner Barry Toman is running in Upper Bann.