Iceland review - 2016, Síða 38

36 ICELAND REVIEW
leader of the party and that Sigurður Ingi
would merely be taking over as PM for
“an unspecified length of time,” a mes-
sage which was generally interpreted in
Iceland as absurd. Outrageous even.
By the evening of April 5 it was clear
that Sigmundur Davíð was staying on
as party leader but it seemed he was
unwilling to acknowledge that resigning
was a permanent act. It was also clear
that the coalition of the Progressive and
the Independence parties would remain
in power.
On April 7, the press returned to
the president’s residence, where the new
government met for the first time. A
non-elected new minister for foreign
affairs, economist Lilja Alfreðsdóttir,
replaced Gunnar Bragi Sveinsson, who
moved to fill Sigurður Ingi’s earlier role
of minister of fisheris and agriculture.
Otherwise, the government remained
unchanged.
Just one day into its existence, the ‘new’
Icelandic government survived the oppo-
sition’s no confidence vote. Parliament
voted along party lines, with all 25 oppo-
sition MPs for the measure and all 38
government MPs against it. One gov-
ernment MP broke ranks, however, in
the vote on holding elections as soon as
possible and voted for the motion.
Sigmundur Davíð, it was reported,
planned to take a break with his family
before traveling the country to meet his
supporters and return to parliament later
in the year.
THE WINTRIS SAGA
The infamous television interview aired
on April 3 wasn’t the first time Icelanders
had heard of Wintris. On March 15,
Sigmundur Davíð’s wife, apparently out
of the blue and in order, she said, to stop
the rumor mill, announced in a post
on Facebook, that she owned a compa-
ny “registered abroad.” Anna Sigurlaug
wrote that mistakenly her husband had
at first been registered as co-owner. Due
tax had always been paid and she empha-
sized that as the PM’s wife she was under
special EU scrutiny.
Details of the post later proved either
wrong or misleading: the company
wasn’t merely registered abroad, but an
offshore company in a tax haven; no
particular EU scrutiny applied and her
statement was written because journal-
ists with information from the Panama
Papers had asked her husband about the
company during the infamous interview,
recorded on March 11 (though it did
not air until April 3). Further media
scrutiny exposed Wintris as a creditor
of the failed Icelandic banks, leading
to questions of conflict of interest: as
prime minister, Sigmundur Davíð had
been involved in crucial decisions on the
banks’ estates, but chose to keep quiet
about his own family’s status as creditors,
through Wintris.
In the three weeks following Anna
Sigurlaug’s Wintris statements,
Sigmundur Davíð studiously avoided all
media asking critical questions, and his
own statements did nothing to clarify the
matter. Documents shown on the April 3
program contradicted his version.
Bjarni and his party colleague Ólöf
Nordal had also been named in Icelandic
media prior to the program as owning
offshore companies. They have now pub-
lished details from their tax statements;
Sigmundur Davíð hasn’t. Although ques-
tions are still being asked, Bjarni’s party
seems unified behind him.
Some of the 22,000 protesters outside parliament demanding that Sigmundur Davíð leave office, the day after the revelations were made public.
NEWS ANALYSIS