The Alliance Party has chosen a Chinese woman as one of its candidates in the NI Assembly elections scheduled for March 7th next year.
Anna Lo, chief executive of the North's Chinese Welfare Association, will contest South Belfast in the election. Alliance said Ms Lo was the first candidate from an ethnic minority background to "contest a winnable seat in the Assembly".
She will be campaigning in a constituency which has witnessed a significant level of racism in recent years, particularly in loyalist areas.
Ms Lo will be mainly challenging the SDLP, the DUP, Sinn Féin and the Ulster Unionist Party for one of the six seats in South Belfast.
She said she intended to be more than a candidate for ethnic minorities. "I want to represent all of the people of South Belfast, irrespective of their background," she said yesterday.
"I hope that my example will encourage many other people to consider engaging in electoral politics. It is through the ballot box and the democratic process that real change can be delivered."
Alliance leader David Ford said her candidature was a "major watershed" in Northern politics.
"The population in Northern Ireland has become much more diverse over recent years. It is time that our politics caught up," he said.
Her standing in South Belfast dealt a "devastating blow" to "the notion that Northern Ireland consists of only two communities", he added.
To win the seat Ms Lo must capture the interest of the South Belfast public. At present the SDLP and Ulster Unionists have two seats each while the DUP and Sinn Féin hold one each.
She must improve on the 2,012 votes won by Alliance candidate Geraldine Rice in the last British general election and the 1,849 votes polled by Ms Rice and Tom Ekin in the 2003 Assembly election.
