Reykjavík Grapevine - 04.12.2015, Síða 12

The campaign for next year's presidential election has
commenced, and it could not have started in a more bi-
zarre way. Generally, people announce they are running
for Iceland’s highest office with a speech, or at least a press
release. In this case, a hoaxer made a Facebook page an-
nouncing the candidacy of Þorgrímur Þráinsson, a former
footballer, best-selling children's book author, and notorious
anti-smoking campaigner.
That poor man! Now people will
tease him about wanting to be
president.
Soon they can donate money too. Þor-
grímur responded to the hoax by say-
ing that he had been thinking about
running, and that while he had not
made a final decision,
he was 95% certain
that he would. This
premature declara-
tion has not brought
forth a rush of can-
didates. Most people
contemplating a bid
for the presidency
are waiting for a decision by the cur-
rent president, Ólafur Ragnar Gríms-
son, as to whether he will run for a
sixth four-year term. In the past, he
has enjoyed keeping people waiting.
In 2012, he did not declare he would
run until early March, less than four
months before the election.
Oh good, election campaigns are
much too long these days.
Ah, but the pre-election campaign
was interminable. Even though it was
clear to everyone by
January that he was
going to run for re-
election, he refused
to comment. Even-
tually some people
started a petition
urging him to run,
which collected
thirty thousand signatures. This led to
an event at Bessastaðir, the presiden-
tial residence. Guðni Ágústsson, a con-
servative politician justly famous for
kissing a cow, gave a speech praising
the president’s virtues and thanked
God for mackerel, cod and the high
quality of Icelandic farm produce.
And you said this year's campaign
had started in a bizarre way.
The president won reelection with
53% of the vote, the lowest vote total
for a reelected president in Iceland’s
history. The previous time he was up
for reelection, he won with 67% of the
vote. The only other time a president
faced a reelection battle, Vigdís Finn-
bogadóttir received 93% of cast bal-
lots.
Wait, if Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson is
a five-term president, why has he
only been up for reelection twice?
The office of the Icelandic presidency
is a bit weird and has limited author-
ity. The main political powers are the
choice of who gets to lead negotia-
tions to form a coalition government
after a parliamentary election, and the
ability to veto laws passed by Parlia-
ment, thereby triggering a national
referendum on the bill. It was only in
2004 that the latter power was first
used. Before that, the office was con-
sidered ceremonial. The president was
thought of as the nation’s symbol of
unity. It was considered impolite to
run against a sitting president.
Usually it's only bloodthirsty
dictators who consider it impolite
to have to run for reelection.
While the current president has not
said whether he will seek another
term, he has seemed like he is cam-
paigning for office in recent weeks. Af-
ter the terrorist attacks in Paris, he has
spoken a great deal about the threat of
radical Islamists. Which, you know,
fair enough, few people like terror-
ists. However, he has tied this to the
planned building of a mosque in Reyk-
javík. He has claimed that the Saudi
Arabian Ambassador to Sweden told
him that the Saudi government would
donate one million US dollars towards
building a mosque in Reykjavík. The
Muslim congregation in Iceland said
they had never heard of this money.
The president connected this alleged
gift with the idea that a mosque would
prove an ideal place to convert young
Muslim men to radical Islam, thereby
linking the free expression of Muslim
belief with terrorism.
Everybody knows you never go
full racist.
Prior to this latest bit of stupidity, his
most infamous moment was a speech
he gave in 2005 where he linked the
apparent success of Icelandic entre-
preneurs to their Viking heritage. The
idea that a group of humans will pro-
duce good businesspeople because of
their culture is not really any different
from thinking that another group will
produce terrorists because of their
culture. Unfortunately for all con-
cerned, the complete and total failure
of the Icelandic Business Vikings did
not lead the president to reconsider his
habit of drawing sweeping conclusions
about large groups of people.
At least democracy allows
large groups of people to draw
sweeping conclusions about him.
Another strange facet of the office of
the Icelandic president is that only a
plurality of votes is needed to win a
presidential election. Only one Icelan-
dic president has ever won a first term
with a majority of the popular vote.
Vigdís Finnbogadóttir won her first
term with only 34%. The worry is that
someone could campaign on a racist
platform and win, even if only receiv-
ing 20-30% support, though that would
require many candidates splitting the
vote. Hopefully the unknown hoaxer
who got Þorgrímur Þráinsson to an-
nounce his 95% candidacy stops there.
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12
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 18 — 2015
So What's
This Presidential
Election I Keep
Hearing About?
By Kári
Tulinius
Everybody
knows you
never go full
racist.
Illustration by
Lóa Hjálmtýs