FOR a party which has famously embraced the ballot box with only one of its hands, Sinn Fein is second to none when it comes to celebrating election victories.
Hardly had the returning officer finished totting up the figures in the West Belfast counting room yesterday afternoon than the raucous cheers of Gerry Adams's supporters were ringing around the first floor of City Hall.
They rang out again when he emerged in triumph and they continued intermittently as he ran the gauntlet of the world's press, stopping for interviews like a man doing the Stations of the Cross.
In the hall downstairs the plain people of West Belfast gathered to greet him, clutching prams and Tricolours. The news of Martin McGuinness's victory in Mid Ulster leaked out and the rafters were raised again.
Finally, the new MP made it down the carpeted steps to be swallowed up by his people. They left the City Hall by the front door, with Mr Adams joined by Gerry Kelly - third in North Belfast and the veteran republican Joe Cahill, who accompanied him all day like a kind of mascot.
A giant Tricolour was unfurled and the noisy procession moved down Donegall Place, the very same street to which John Major took his doomed campaign last Monday. Where the RUC had gone before the hapless Mr Major on Monday, this time they stayed in the rear. An outraged woman told the police to "take those flags off them" but the LandRovers kept their distance.
Back in the City Hall, although two unionist seats remained to be decided, life had drained out of the proceedings.
The DUP's Peter Robinson attempted to introduce some brimstone into the atmosphere. He thanked "almighty God" for his victory and then stormed off the stage so that he did not have to spend "any longer than necessary in the company of a frontman for an organisation that would shoot a policewoman in the back".
Neither that, nor the inevitable reelection of the Rev Martin Smyth for South Belfast, created much of a stir. In fact, as big a cheer greeted the performance of the PUP's David Ervine, whose third place gave him an unexpected place on the podium.
But the calm in the wake of the republicans departure gave the SDLP a chance to reflect on what had gone wrong. As late as midmorning, when the Hendron camp was privately conceding defeat, spokesmen put the likely majority at 1,500. How this swelled to 8,000, nobody in the party knew.
There were no allegations about vote fixing, and Gerry Adams and Joe Hendron had earlier exchanged a friendly handshake. But a woman supporter was in tears as the Adams entourage trooped out of City Hall, and a male colleague explained: "It's not very nice to see your flag bastardised like that."
