Reykjavík Grapevine - 20.10.2017, Page 21

21The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 19 — 2017
“It's more fun
to make it to the
World Cup than
to make it to the
Small League
Of Nations Cup.
It's more fun to
be one of the big
boys than to be
the best of the
small boys.”
American
Style:
Iceland’s
Elections
Get Farcical
Less about issues or even parties than individuals
Words: Paul Fontaine
Election season in Iceland always
has a certain element of silliness.
Campaign adverts can be cringe-in-
ducingly bad; the “debates” are com-
prised of reiterated talking points
with the occasional and rare zinger;
giant blow-up posters of the same va-
cant smile on every candidate’s face
are splashed all over town. If we’re
really lucky, there might be a brand
new party that’s virtually indistin-
guishable from some other estab-
lished party, but they never do well
enough in the elections to win a seat.
All that changed when the Icelan-
dic government collapsed in 2009.
Since then, we have been witnessing
the age-old snark about Iceland—
“a country of little kings”—prov-
ing painfully true, especially in this
election cycle. More small parties
have been forming, which is not in
itself a bad thing at all, but there has
also been an increased emphasis on
which individuals are running for
what party, rather than what that in-
dividual or party even stands for.
From direct
democracy to
celebrity
The government collapse of 2009 set
the stage. We saw a new party form
just a few months before elections
and actually win seats: the Citizen’s
Movement (Borgarahreyfingin),
which won four seats in parliamen-
tary elections. Normally, new par-
ties are either utterly locked out, or
required a long period of concerted
campaigning just to get their foot
in the door. The democratic crisis of
2009 changed all that. The Citizen’s
Movement stood for directly demo-
cratic principles and had a well-
known activist and
poet in their ranks,
Birgitta Jónsdót-
tir. Their election
opened up the idea
that direct democ-
racy could happen;
that ordinary peo-
ple could, through
sheer force of will,
have direct power
and influence in this
country.
This was fur-
ther reflected in the
movement to draft
a new constitution.
While the rules for
running for the Con-
stitutional Council idealistically pre-
cluded anyone who had been in office
or run for office before from running
for the Council, all this meant was
that Icelanders popularly known to
the public for other reasons man-
aged to get voted in instead. A lot of
these council members were writers,
bloggers, journalists and academics
whose faces and names were well
known to Icelandic households.
At this point, it seemed as though
Icelanders were leaning away from
party politics and more towards an
appeal to celebrity, passing up on di-
rect democracy entirely. That trend
was cemented by the formation of
Jón Gnarr’s Best Party.
Simply the best
The common narrative is that the
Best Party, formed in 2009, became
so successful in the 2010 Reykjavík
elections because they represented a
change from business as usual. This
ignores the fact that there were oth-
er small, newly-formed parties who
were offering something new; they
just didn’t have the celebrity power
of Jón Gnarr, who solicited the help of
other celebrities, such as musicians
Einar Örn Benediktsson and Óttarr
Proppé. A party that literally stood
for nothing—as their selling point
was often touted—managed to win
enough seats to have an almost clean
majority in City Hall.
The result? Not that terrible, re-
ally. The coalition finished its term
unremarkably; nothing to look back
on and celebrate, but nothing to re-
ally complain about, either. The co-
alition of the Best Party and the So-
cial Democrats could be likened to a
family—the Social Democrats were
like your parents, paying the bills and
keeping the house in order but not
being particularly fun to hang out
with, and the Best Party was like your
wacky uncle, the one who lets you
have ice cream for dinner, watch an
R-rated movie and stay up past your
bedtime, but leaves all the heavy lift-
ing to mom and dad.
Crisis after crisis
While the Best Party dissolved, its
sister party, Bright Future, led by the
aforementioned Óttarr, won six seats
in the 2013 elections. But the effect of
this celebrity move-
ment devoid of a
platform would live
on.
S i g m u n d u r
Davíð Gunnlaugs-
son, best known to
most Icelanders at
the time as a for-
mer reporter on
public broadcast-
ing service RÚV,
further cemented
his household
name recognition
by his involvement
with the InDefense
movement, a group
that vehemently op-
posed any public bailout of Icesave.
Sigmundur quickly rose through the
ranks of the Progressive Party to be-
come its chair. He also became the
Prime Minister in the wake of the
2013 elections.
As is now a matter of history, Sig-
mundur would become unseated in
April 2016 as a result of the Panama
Papers leaks. Elections held in Octo-
ber of that year saw yet another new
party: the Reform Party, chaired by
Benedikt Jóhannesson, a well-known
businessman and publisher. This
party went from zero seats to seven
in the span of a few months.
In light of the trend towards ce-
lebrity, it is then entirely unsurpris-
ing that the Independence Party
would use both Bright Future and
the Reform Party to bolster a ruling
coalition. However, that coalition
last barely a year, when a crisis over
“restored honour” for a convicted
paedophile led to Bright Future with-
drawing from the coalition, effective-
ly collapsing the government.
A circus without
a ringleader
Which brings us to today. The 2017
parliamentary elections have es-
chewed any sense of democracy. Talk
about issues has been drowned out
by celebrity chatter. We’re seeing not
one, but two new parties polling high
enough to win seats: the Peoples’
Party, a populist party with a plat-
form as malleable and undefined as
wet clay but led by the grandmotherly
Inga Sæland; and the Centre Party, it-
self a cheap copy of the Progressives,
formed by Sigmundur Davíð, and
seeming to serve no other purpose
than to get him into office again. The
Progressives have managed to at-
tract Biggi the Cop, a police officer
who became Facebook-famous for
his toothy, cheerful videos. Jón Gnarr
announced that he was joining forces
with the Social Democrats (although
he’s been cagey about whether or not
he will run again). Bright Future and
the Reform Party are still running, no
matter how badly they’re polling. You
get the picture.
For all intents and purposes, this
year’s parliamentary elections are
less about platform points or even
party ideals than they are about indi-
vidual charm and the headrush that
comes from seeing some new faces
in the running—even if these people
have poorly defined or non-existent
platforms. Why is this happening?
Where will this
take us?
This is happening because Iceland-
ers feel that we are out of options.
New parties and familiar faces are
trusted, even when they have literally
nothing to offer, because they’re not
The Four Parties, as Icelanders of-
ten call the Independence Party, the
Progressives, the Social Democrats
and the Leftist-Greens (just the fact
that they’re called “the four parties”
should tell you what kind of monolith
they’re regarded as being). Throw a
well-liked public figure in the mix,
and that new party becomes all the
more appealing.
None of this is to say that new par-
ties or even celebrities running for
office are bad things in themselves.
They aren’t—when they offer actual
change in the form of concrete plat-
form points. But that’s not what’s
happening. Making the shift away
from this Battle of Egos and into elec-
tions over issues is going to require
people running for office who are
brave enough to take actual stands on
actual issues. It will require both vot-
ers and the media to hold candidates
accountable and demand they make
concrete statements on the matters
most pressing to Icelanders. And it
will require concerted pressure on
those voted in to make significant
and systemic changes to our political
institutions.
All of which may be wishful think-
ing. A nobody with great ideas is
always going to have a harder time
against a celebrity with no ideas.
However, unless we’re willing to put
aside celebrity and novelty and vote
according to issues, this American-
style circus is going to keep right on
performing.
“The 2017 par-
liamentary
elections have
eschewed any
sense of democ-
racy. Talk about
issues has been
drowned out by
celebrity
chatter.”
the work will speak to everyone. “I re-
alise that this is being performed in the
national theatre, and so tax money is
funding this,” he says. “And so I ask my-
self, what is required of me for this in-
vestment? I cannot in good conscience
say 'to get across my opinions about ev-
erything,' because what we're not lack-
ing in Iceland is more opinions. What
we are actually lacking is some sort of
overview and review, and maybe at the
core to make peace with the fact that
there isn't an answer.”
Have we learned anything though?
Þorleifur believes we might have. “The
difference between the boom now and
the boom then is that the boom then
was fueled by delusion,” he says. “The
current boom is much more fueled
by real economic data. We have doubt
now. Now there is a large section that
doubts. There is a demand for a differ-
ent way of communicating and run-
ning things. We're living, globally, in
times of extreme change. It has dark
sides, but it also has incredible possi-
bilities.”
For better or for worse, we may just
have to accept that sometimes, there
just isn’t one definitive answer. "I find
it extremely important to not create a
narrow narrative,” Þórleifur insists.
“But rather, to have this perspective of
a kind of post-modern state of mind,
with the constant doubt, and the idea
that any given information will only
reveal new levels of information, where
every interpretation doesn't lead to a
point, but only leads to another inter-
pretation. This is an intolerable state
of being, but if we're going to be true
to our innermost selves in the capital-
ist world we live in, that is a state we
might have to accept as a basis."