THE daughter of former Sinn Fein vice-president Maire Drumm is to stand as a candidate for Eirigi in May's local government elections.
Maire Drumm, whose mother was murdered by loyalists in 1976 as she waited to undergo an operation in Belfast's Mater hospital, is hoping to secure a seat on Belfast City Council.
Her father Jimmy Drumm was a prominent member of the IRA in the 1970s.
A former republican prisoner who served four years in Armagh jail in the late 1970s, Ms Drumm (58) is a member of Colin Neighbourhood Partnership and chairman of Lag-more Community Forum.
The mother of three said she believed her mother would have been opposed to Sinn Fein's involvement in power-sharing at Stormont.
"I'm always reluctant to speak on behalf of the dead but my mother was alive at the time of Sunningdale and she rejected that settlement," Ms Drumm said.
"Like me, I believe she would have regarded the present arrangements as bringing us no closer to a united socialist republic."
Eirigi general secretary Breandan Mac Cionnaith said that while Ms Drumm's candidacy was symbolic, it was not the reason she had been selected.
"Maire has been involved in politics for a long time and has a strong record of community activism," he said.
Ms Drumm will stand in the Colin ward, which includes Poleglass and Twinbrook. Formerly these nationalist estates were part of Lisburn Borough Council but have been incorporated into Belfast City Council under local government reform.
The anti-Good Friday Agreement party has also announced that Padraig Mac Coitir will stand in the Black Mountain electoral ward in west Belfast. In the 2011 local government election Mr Mac Coitir polled 1,415 votes. Eirigi has put forward six candidates to contest the local government elections in the south.
Mr Mac Cionnaith said there was a possibility that further candidates would be announced on both sides of the border in the coming weeks.
"It's all about developing the party and in many areas we are breaking new ground," he said.
Made up largely of disaffected Sinn Fein members, Eirigi was set up in 2006 in opposition to the Stormont power-sharing administration.
The party seeks a 'British withdrawal' from Northern Ireland and the establishment of a 32-county republic based on democratic socialist principles. High-profile dissident republican Colin Duffy was briefly a member but left shortly before his arrest in connection with the murder of two soldiers at Antrim's Massereene barracks in 2009.
