Norway fisheries minister moved to justice
NORWAY’S fisheries minister, Per Sandberg, has been appointed acting justice minister amid a growing political crisis in Oslo.
He replaces Sylvi Listhaug, a controversial figure in the ruling centre right coalition, whose hard line views on immigration threatened to bring down the government last month.
It is not known if Sandberg will eventually return to his fishing post, but he has been told to run the justice ministry ‘until further notice’.
The Oslo government, led by prime minister Erna Solberg,has been at the centre of some extraordinary infighting. Listhaug caused a storm when she accused the opposition Labour Party of putting terrorists’ rights before national security. The party’s youth members were the target of the country’s worst peacetime massacre in July 2011 when 77 people died at the hands of Anders Brevik.
Sandberg, who is a member of the Progressive Party, has been an effective, if combative, fisheries minister.