Reykjavík Grapevine - nóv. 2020, Blaðsíða 10

10 The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 09— 2020
a new, even bigger mural was painted
nearby.
"And that one still stands, because
what the power-holders realised is that
when they try to silence us, we become
stronger,” she says. “As soon as they
washed this wall, it was all over the
media and thousands of people signed
the petition. You can say a lot of things
about Icelanders—we're very tolerant
of the corruption that goes down here,
but we don't like to be silenced, that's
for sure.”
What does the
new constitu-
tion change?
There’s a great deal that Helga likes
about the changes the new constitu-
tion would offer, a great deal of them
having to do with creating a more just
and democratic society.
"One of the most important changes
in the new constitution is that natural
resources should be the property of the
nation,” she says. “The biggest mistake
that we made in Iceland in terms of
inequality is in how the fishing quota
system came about. There's just a few
families getting all the money from
the fisheries in Iceland, when it could
be used to build our education, welfare
and health care systems. Instead, this
money is hidden in some tax havens in
Tortola.”
"Another important change,” Helga
continues, “is that if there's a piece of
legislation that the people don't want,
and they want to have a vote on it, then
the people can ask for a referendum
and they can vote on it. We've been
seeing around the world that there are
politicians trying to decrease the rights
of women and the queer community. If
a politician wanted to try that here, the
nation could intervene and stop it from
[becoming] law."
Dr. Lawrence Lessig, an academic,
attorney and political activist, has
been keenly interested in the Icelandic
constitutional process for many years.
In an interview with the Grapevine in
2016, he offered that the new constitu-
tion could have wider implications for
the rest of the world.
“I think that the process for draft-
ing this constitution is the most demo-
cratic process we’ve seen in the history
of constitutions anywhere,” he said.
“We’ve never seen something like this.
This process involved an incredibly
intelligent mix between grassroots,
citizen-driven input, expert-crafting
direction and an actual deliberative
process for drafting the constitu-
tion that wasn’t controlled by insid-
ers. The process was representative
of the values that the constitution
should embrace; it mixes the different
elements that a democratic constitu-
tion should include: it has expertise,
but it also has democratic pedigree.
There isn’t another constitution that
has passed through this mix of demo-
cratic accountability in the history of
constitutions. That’s objectively a very
important fact about the nature of the
constitution.”
Helga agrees, citing the process by
which the new constitutional draft was
written.
"We elected 'normal people'; not
solely politicians [to work on this
constitution],” she says. “It's written by
the people and for the people. It's right
there in the preface. You can see what
values it's based upon; it has this long-
term thinking, which is not what we're
used to. It's a text that's written with
the heart and soul in it. It's supposed
to be our social covenant that we can
base everything else upon. Of course,
it's not perfect. It's supposed to be a
living instrument. But if Parliament is
going to make any changes to the draft,
this is the criteria that they should use:
that those changes are for the benefit
of everyone; not just the few.”
“I think it matters to democratic
activists and theorists around the
world, because we have so many exam-
ples of democracy failing around the
world, that we need an example of
democracy succeeding,” Lawrence said
in 2016. “And this would be an example
of that because of two parts: one part
is basically a grassroots democratic
movement to crowdsource a consti-
tution, which is then supported by
two-thirds of the voting public, and
eventually enacted. That’s a kind of
reassertion of the vitality in the demo-
cratic process. But on the other side,
it would also be important to see the
elites and the government yield; to see
them acknowledge and concede to the
authority of the democratic process.”
So how do we
get there?
If there’s so much resistance to the
constitutional draft, how can we
affect change? Katrín sees a number
of options. There is, for example, the
fact that the Social Democrats, the
Pirate Party, and the two former Left-
Green MPs—Andrés Ingi Jónsson and
Rósa Björk Brynjólfsdóttir—recently
submitted a bill to Parliament based
on the new constitution. While Katrín
is not optimistic about its chances of
passing, she does believe it could pave
the way for more substantial changes.
"At least this is one way of keeping
the new constitution alive and keeping
it where it belongs: inside Parliament,
to be discussed there and hopefully
one day voted on there,” she says. “One
of the horror stories about this case
is that just before the 2013 elections,
when the [Social Democrat and Left-
Green] majority wanted to put this
forward to be voted on in Parliament,
parties such as the Independence Party
used filibustering to prevent the vote
from happening."
"I think we need to vote for parties
that are actively pushing for the new
constitution and push the old parties
to tell us exactly where they stand, so
that the voters can have a clear idea
before going to the polls,” Helga says.
“This is what we want to press."
Katrín is of much the same mind,
with her sights set on 2021, when the
next parliamentary elections will be
held.
"We really want this to be one of
the major issues of the elections,” she
says. “This is the big picture. Elections
tend to revolve around smaller things.
We are at the point in time where we
need to start thinking about what sort
of society we're going to be. Are we this
'New Iceland' that we were promised
after the economic crash? Will it ever
actually see the light of day? We have
really big things to work on as a society
and if we don't work from our founda-
tions in deciding how we're going to
proceed as a nation, then it's very hard
to see how we're going to be able do this
in any kind of beautiful way."
"I think it's very important now
because we're going into a recession,”
Helga says. “We really need people to
realise that having this new constitu-
tion benefits the people. It's a game
changer in terms of how we deal with
unemployment, bankruptcy and what's
ahead of us."
Ultimately, Helga believes the
very future of Iceland—especially in
these trying times—hinges upon the
creation of a new constitution.
"It's like we have two nations here,”
she says. “There's the few, who have all
the money, resources and own most
of the media, and then just normal
people. We have to realise that if we
want to try to equalise the balance,
we need this new constitution. It's the
basis. It's how you move forward with
everything."
Katrín Jakobsdóttir