Reykjavík Grapevine - 04.03.2016, Page 28

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Picking The
Right Horse
For The Race
Icelanders will elect a
new president at the end
of June. There are less
than four months to go. As
of now not a single adver-
tisement has been put up.
There have been no de-
bates and few statements
of intent, either. There are
no “establishment candidates” yet.
Traditionally the President of Iceland has been
independent from the sphere of party politics,
but it has inevitably been a person with a solid
base in a rooted tradition like academia, the
civil service or similar. In that sense, the can-
didates we have seen so far are not part of the
establishment.
Nontraditional candidates might sound like a
good thing but perhaps people are starting to
long for an inside-the-box person. We already
elected a comedian mayor of Reykjavík and
he served a full term. The Prime Minister of
Iceland, no matter how politically divisive he
might be, was not made through traditional
party politics. He rose to power through an
anti-establishment grassroots movement that
opposed the Icesave obligation. He is not by any
standards your average politician.
Maybe people just want a set of grey suits,
women’s or men’s, as president. Someone who
speaks good Icelandic and doesn’t embarrass
us. No flair but moderately good hair. It’s hard
to describe this kind of candidate. It has to be
someone who is a usual suspect but not com-
pletely worn out, a soldier who has seen some
combat action but never killed a civilian. In case
you are an American reading this that thinks
we’re talking about an actual military person:
We’re not, this is just a figure of speech.
We could also save ourselves a lot of trouble
by not having a human president at all. Tradi-
tionally the president has to have an interest in
horses. Why not skip the human part altogeth-
er and find a good-looking horse? If we pick a
young stud he could easily be a five-termer.
SHARE: gpv.is/backthinks
Bergur Ebbi
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