Reykjavík Grapevine - 21.09.2012, Side 8

8
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 15 — 2012
Iceland | FAQ
Þorgerður Katrín Gunnarsdót-
tir, former education and cul-
ture minister, current member
of parliament and recent vice-
chairman of the right-wing Inde-
pendence Party, said in a recent
interview that "it cannot happen
that some individuals in the In-
dependence Party, along with
some members of the Progres-
sive Party, make it their project
to create a tea party movement
in Iceland. The Independence
Party must not become the Tea
Party of Iceland." As Icelanders
are generally not fond of Repub-
licans (in a recent survey 98%
said they would vote for Obama
over Romney if they were Amer-
ican), invoking the Tea Party
is just a shade less harsh than
calling someone Kitler, the Kit-
ten Hitler.
I was hoping this was some kind
of countrywide party with lots of
tea and cakes.
Nope, this is politics, whose only resem-
blance to tea and cakes is that when you
have too much of it, you feel like vom-
iting. Since this whole article is going
to be about politics, only the strong of
stomach should proceed. Okay, ready?
Here we go. Considering how unpopu-
lar Republicans are among Icelanders, it
has been a bit weird seeing the Indepen-
dence Party identifying with the Ameri-
can right-wing. Recently its youth wing
released an ad calling for an offensive
against socialism, featuring—alongside
pictures of Icelandic and European polit-
ical leaders—President Obama. Which
has to be the most incongruous politi-
cal poster since someone put a picture
of Bert the Muppet on a pro-Osama Bin
Laden poster. To further the ideological
link-up, the chairperson of the party,
Bjarni Benediktsson, went to this year's
Republican National Conference, along
with Ragnheiður Elín Árnadóttir, the
party whip. In the political sense of the
term, sadly.
Surely they have nothing to
learn from a political campaign
designed to make charisma-free
Mitt Romney seem interesting?
Funny you should say that, because the
Independence Party has its own Rom-
ney in Bjarni Benediktsson. Like the
Republican, he was born wealthy, has a
shady business reputation which is off-
set somewhat by the perfectness of his
hair, and has been forced to change his
opinions to suit party hardliners. That
said, he has nothing like the Bond vil-
lain-type riches of Romney. His person-
al wealth has been estimated at about a
hundred million krónur, or just shy of
one million dollars, though he stands to
inherit a lot more. That still makes him
plenty rich by Icelandic standards, and
one of the five richest sitting MPs.
Let me guess, the wealthiest
politician is some namby-pamby
champagne socialist
progressive politician.
The wealthiest MP, ten times richer than
his nearest colleague, is the chairper-
son of the Progressive Party, Sigmun-
dur Davíð Gunnlaugsson. His wealth
has been estimated at well over eleven
hundred million krónur, or a little less
than ten million dollars. Which is weird
considering that until fairly recently the
ideology of the party he leads was agrar-
ian socialism. However, in recent years
the Progressive Party has been a party
searching for an ideology like a two
year old kid looking for Waldo, getting
bored after five seconds and running to
the nearest adult to ask them to change
their diaper because they did a doo doo,
which is sort of how they ended up with
Sigmundur Davíð as chair.
Didn't the Progressive Party also
get accused of being an
Icelandic Tea Party?
Yes, and Sigmundur Davíð's assistant
responded by saying that he had "zero
tolerance for that kind of bullshit." Un-
dercutting his words somewhat was the
recent proposal by three Progressive
Party MPs that the Icelandic parliament
investigates whether its members had
anything to do with violence against par-
liament and the police during the 2009
Pots and Pans Revolution following the
financial crash. No one is named in the
proposal but it is clear that it is aimed at
certain MPs of the Left-Green party, no-
tably its chair, Steingrímur J. Sigfússon,
and Álfheiður Ingadóttir who, I should
note in the interest of maintaining a
semblance of left-right cheap laugh par-
ity in this article, is the party whip.
I was going to ask what a party
whip does, but I'm pretty sure
it can't possibly live up to the
name.
Basically, in the Icelandic parliament
their main function is to confer with
the Speaker of the... sorry, I think I will
erase that particularly boring bit of in-
formation from my brain and go back
to snickering childishly at the term
"party whip." To sober up a bit, however,
it is rather uncomfortable to think that
members of parliament feel the need to
propose launching an investigation into
their political adversaries based on noth-
ing more than hearsay and innuendo.
While not much that Icelandic politi-
cians do is remotely similar to the kinds
of shenanigans Republicans who court
with the Tea Party get up to, insinua-
tions of left-wing conspiracy is exactly
the kind of thing they do. That kind of
politics requires a cup of mint tea to
soothe the stomach.
So What's This Icelandic Tea Party
I Keep Hearing About?
Words
Kári Tulinius
Illustration
Lóa Hjálmtýsdóttir
Speaking of Tea Parties, have you been following all the latest RomneyMania news?
If Mitt Romney were an Icelandic politician, who would he be? Sigmundur Davíð
maybe?
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1
September began weirdly, as the media widely reported
on a brutal attack of a six-year-old
boy by a group of older boys, which
allegedly left the victim hospital-
ised. The event was
so unheard of in
Iceland that it
naturally gained
a lot of traction.
However, when
police were
contacted about
the matter, they said that they had
only learned about the attacks
through the media—nobody had
reported to the police that their son
had been beaten and hospitalised.
The matter got weirder when it
came to light that the sole witness
of the event was a football coach,
who claimed to have stopped the
attack and insisted that the parents
involved didn’t want to go to the
police. Right. Further digging re-
vealed that there was no concrete
evidence backing up that the attack
ever happened in the first place,
and police believe the matter was
a hoax. What a strange way to get
your name in the paper.
It also happened to be an unusually bad month to be
a sheep in Iceland. Earlier in the
month, several sheep died in a
truck accident, ironically, on their
way to the slaughter-
house. The other
sheep probably
thought they
got off easy
until they got to
where they were
going. Later on,
many sheep in the north of Iceland
found themselves stranded in foul
weather and needed to be rescued
from being buried alive in the
snow. Again, the sheep were saved
thanks to the concerted effort of
the Rescue Squad and others. They
were promptly shipped off to be
slaughtered.
In fact, September saw some unseasonably bad weather for
much of the country. The afore-
mentioned snow and ice up north
was accompanied by winds up to
25 metres per second. Power lines
were downed across north Iceland,
with Akureyri—the region’s largest
town—losing electricity for several
hours. Surrounding farms and vil-
lages found themselves without
power for days afterwards.
Continues over
NEWS IN BRIEF
NEWS IN ICELAND
EARLY SEPTEMBER