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E-mailSDLP deputy leader Dr Alasdair McDonnell will this week announce he is standing for the party leadership.
McDonnell will be running against the North's social development minister, Margaret Ritchie, in what will be an extremely close race. The new SDLP leader will be elected at the party's annual conference in February.
McDonnell said the election presented a "tremendous opportunity to refocus, reinvigorate, re-energise and rebuild the SDLP". Once the North's largest nationalist party, the SDLP has been completely over-taken by Sinn Féin in the last decade.
Mark Durkan last month announced he was standing down as leader. McDonnell said the SDLP had worked tirelessly for peace but there was still much to do: "That will require a leader determined to build on the wealth of experience and wisdom in the party, while bringing in new and talented young women and men.
"A team player committed to the challenge of change who will put passion, confidence and ambition back into our party. The days of the SDLP being sidelined are over. It's time for us to reassert ourselves."
McDonnell (60), the South Belfast MP, will formally announce his candidature on Tuesday. At 5/4, Margaret Ritchie is the bookies' favourite with McDonnell close second favourite at 6/4. He is supported by several Assembly members, including Patsy McGlone from Mid-Ulster.
Ritchie is supported by Alex Attwood from West Belfast, Carmel Hanna from McDonnell's own South Belfast constituency, and Dolores Kelly in Upper Bann. Attwood described Ritchie as the most popular politician in the North.
Ritchie's attempts to stop funding for a UDA-linked project won widespread admiration and she is one of Stormont's most high-profile ministers. However, McDonnell's supporters say he possesses the gravitas and political nous to challenge Sinn Féin and reverse his party's electoral fortunes.
The votes of delegates from South Belfast, South Down, and Foyle – the largest SDLP constituencies – will be pivotal.
McDonnell's candidature will be announced in Belfast's Old Museum Arts' Centre – next door to the SDLP's original headquarters – in line with his theme of rebuilding the party.
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Intersting article/
McDonnell is the only one who can lead the SDLP out of Durkan's mess. He has the track record of organisation and winning in difficult situations. Ritchie has been anointed the whole way through her political career. She has relied on McGrady for her council and even her MLA position. She hasn't yet had to get her hands dirty. Her ministership was also handed to her. What experience does she have? I fear she is in love with the idea without realising that this will be totally different to anything she has done before. McDonnell however is a fighter and a winner against the odds. He knows how to get what he wants and goes out to get it. Ritchie has been handed so much of what she has on a plate.
Ritchie is also just more of the same old leadership that has brought the SDLP to where it is now. She is an acolyte of Durkan and will continue to peddle the strategy of political arrogance and snobbery that has beset many in the SDLP. She cannot hope to keep the party together if she wins. In such a situation she will be queen of a decaying and declining party. Look at her key supporters: Attwood, who stitched Seamus Mallon up years ago to get Durkan in cannot even guarantee he will even be an MLA next time around. He has single handedly destroyed the SDLP vote in West Belfast. Dolores Kelly is another MLA at risk. She cannot see that she has real problems in her own constituency. These MLAs are ambling around the corridors of Stormont trying to be important people, yet they forget that a politician's first priority is to their constituents. The best and hardest working politicians and people in the party will leave them to their obsolesence and head off to GREENER fields; i.e. Fianna Fail
Grouch