Largely ceremonial post of president of the Irish Republic

On Thursday, after a 40-day campaign as the candidate political wing of the Republican movement, Mr. McGuinness will be one of seven candidates in an election for the largely ceremonial post of president of the Irish Republic. Should he upset heavy odds and win, Mr. McGuinness would move from his current base in Belfast, the Northern Ireland capital, to the Irish president’s residence, an 18th-century mansion outside Dublin that was home to Britain’s viceroys in Ireland. Irish commentators have seen his candidacy as part of a long-term plan to create a new “normal” in Ireland, slowly erasing the barriers between north and south. “Clearly, the people of Ireland would see me as president for all the 32 counties,” he said in an interview as he prepared for a speech in Galway to a hall packed with thunderously enthusiastic Sinn Fein loyalists. On an autumn evening beside the storied beauty of Galway Bay, with a chilly breeze blowing off the Atlantic, breezed into a popular tourist hotel that looks out across the bay with the air of a man who has found a measure of peace after a lifetime gripped by Ireland’s troubled past.