Former IRA prisoner Gerry McGeough has confirmed his intention to stand against Sinn Féin in the next Assembly election.
Mr McGeough has been a critic of the party's move to endorse the PSNI, which was backed by an overwhelming majority at yesterday's ard fheis in Dublin.
The 48-year-old, who was jailed in the United States in the early 1990s for gun-running, has responded to the vote by confirming that he will seek an Assembly seat in Fermanagh and South Tyrone.
He says he was not surprised by yesterday's outcome as the republican movement had been "recruited into the British Crown system" and was "being used to administer and maintain British rule".