Reykjavík Grapevine - 08.04.2005, Síða 17

Growing Pains for the
World’s Oldest Parliament
Sometime this year, Spaugstofan, the comedy program that is
the country’s most popular television show, took on an eerie
role. As it parodied the leaders of Iceland, we realized that
the country’s elected representatives are a great deal more
cartoonish than their parodies are. In fact, with Prime Minister
Halldór Ásgrímsson seemingly taking a cue from the Bush
administration and withdrawing from the press entirely (despite
promises to the contrary), the parodies on Iceland’s weekly
comedy show now seem like they’re running the country.
To introduce you to the political situation here: Iceland is home
to the world’s oldest parliament, the Alþingi, a democratic
government of landholders formed in 930 CE, with activities
that were extremely well documented in the Sagas from the
13th century on. Among the many world leaders to celebrate
the importance of the Alþingi, former President Clinton
made a pilgrimage to Þingvellir during his visit to Iceland this
summer. He claimed he had taught about Alþingi at Yale, and
that the Althingi “was amazing because it managed to give just
enough power to get things done, but not enough to allow for
corruption.” The compliment, given at a time when the Bush
administration was under heavy fire for the Abu Ghraib scandal,
suggested that America could learn a lot from Iceland’s Alþingi.
This month, the Icelandic Alþingi attempted to teach America
another lesson in democracy and justice by importing what it
saw as a needlessly persecuted asylum seeker—in doing so, it
exposed how flawed and irrelevant the Alþingi has become.
Alþingi United, Country Divided on Fischer
Granting Bobby Fischer Icelandic citizenship has not gone
over well in the international media. The Boston Globe, one
of many American papers to run editorials condemning the
action, pointed out how many false assumptions the Icelandic
government made in “lionizing” someone who will “become a
blight on Icelandic society for years to come.”
The European response doesn’t look to be much better. As
Róbert Marshall, president of the Icelandic Journalist Union,
told me in a phone interview from the annual meeting of the
European Union of Journalists in Bilbao “talking with people
here, none of them understand why we did this. None of them
make any distinction between [Fischer] appearing in Iceland
in 1972 and the hatred of Jewish people and the unbelievable
nonsense that comes out of this man. They see the whole thing
as one package.”
In other words, according to American and European critics,
the Alþingi painted their country as one that values anti-
Semitism and tax evasion.
By Bart Cameron
With reporting from Paul F. Nikolov
Or, How the Progressive Party Won Our Vote