Norway votes in ‘election thriller’
Norwegians voted yesterday in an election nail-biter in “the world’s happiest country” with the outgoing rightwing coalition facing a strong challenge from the centre-left opposition. Opinion polls in the oil-rich Nordic state have predicted an extraordinarily close race between Conservative Prime Minister Erna Solberg’s team and the opposition led by Labour’s Jonas Gahr Store. Several small parties could end up as kingmakers.
“I’m ready for four more years,” the popular and experienced 56-year-old Solberg said as she voted yesterday in a school in her hometown of Bergen on the west coast. “Let’s see if the Norwegian people are ready for four more years with me.” Everything is “set for the biggest election thriller in many decades,” a political commentator for TV2 television said after a final opinion poll published Saturday credited the right with the narrowest possible majority, albeit within the margin of error.
In power since 2013, the coalition government, comprising Solberg’s Conservatives and the mildly populist anti-immigration Progress Party, has campaigned on a vow of continuity. The government has successfully steered the wealthy country of 5.3 million Western Europe’s biggest oil producerthrough two crises: the oil industry’s slump after the drop in crude prices since 2014, and the migrant crisis in 2015.
Over the past four years, the right has focused on kickstarting the economy and preparing the country for the post-oil era by reducing taxes. The opposition and many economists have however criticized the government for dipping too generously into the country’s massive sovereign wealth fund, worth almost $1 trillion. Meanwhile, Store, a millionaire, has vowed to raise taxes for the richest, in a bid to bolster Norwegians’ cherished welfare state and reduce inequalities in society.
“We need a change now because we are growing apart from each other,” the 57-year-old Labor leader said after casting his ballot on Sunday, an option offered in many municipalities. Elin Festoy, a 49-year-old media producer, said she was voting for the right because employment was the key issue in her eyes. “I think we need to get young people into jobs, and the best way to integrate refugees and immigrants is by job creation,” she said.
Meanwhile, 28-year-old recruiter Kaja van der Schoor said she was voting for change. “I would say, when it comes to refugees, that I think we need some things to change,” she said. “I think it’s been fronted as a way to split society and sort of scare Norway, that it’s a bad thing. But it’s something we have to do. We have to help.”
Small parties key
Norway is blessed with high living standards, education and a comprehensive welfare statequalities that helped it to be named the happiest country in the world in a respected UN study in March. The Conservatives and Labor agree on many issues: continuing oil activities in the Arctic, a restricted immigration policy, and close ties with the EU, of which Norway is not a member.
Yet Labor has criticized Solberg for her difficulty in taming her occasionally provocative junior coalition partner, the Progress Party, especially Immigration and Integration Minister Sylvi Listhaug. Labor and the Conservatives are expected to post lower election scores compared to four years ago. As a result, both will be dependent on the support of smaller parties who have played an unusually large role in the campaign-and tricky negotiations to form a government seem inevitable. —AFP