Iceland’s Voters Are Poised to Punish Conservatives

[G_j]

Source: NYT

Iceland’s Voters Are Poised to Punish Conservatives

By JOHN F. BURNS
Published: April 25, 2009

REYKJAVIK, Iceland — It is a tale of light and dark — of a small but rugged country far from anywhere that has suffered as severely as any in the developed world at the hands of buccaneering free-marketeers, but which is now slowly digging itself out from the financial wreckage.


Voters waited at a polling station at City Hall in Reykjavik, Iceland. A leftist coalition is expected to win a strong popular mandate.

An important milestone was reached on Saturday, when the country’s voters went to the polls to elect a new government, three months after riotous street protests over the country’s banking collapse forced the country’s conservative-led administration from office. Leading one of the first governments anywhere to lose office because of the global financial crisis, the conservatives were blamed for their perceived complicity in the banks’ accumulating unsustainable, multibillion debts, and their partnership with a group of freewheeling Icelandic entrepreneurs known as the “New Vikings.”

Six months after the banks collapsed and three of the largest were nationalized, the grim consequences are only now becoming fully understood after months of forensic work by financial experts. Many of the debts that drove the banks to the brink of default were incurred as the New Vikings went on a splurge of acquisitions that made them owners of department store chains, soccer clubs and investment houses in Britain and other parts of Europe, as well as mansions, helicopters and Ferraris on their sojourns at home here in Iceland.

At least for the moment, the entrepreneurs are pariahs, and the electorate in this country of 350,000 is poised to impose a reckoning, punishing the conservatives and handing power for the first time in Iceland to a leftist coalition.

The final outcome of the election, expected to be announced on Sunday, was expected to be a strong popular mandate for the Social Democrats and Left-Greens, a socialist group, who have formed a caretaker government since February. Opinion polls before the vote showed a wide lead for the two left-wing parties, which together drew the support of more than 55 percent of those polled, with the Social Democrats narrowly outpolling the more radical Left-Greens.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/world/europe/26iceland.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

[Stockholm]

1. I am not impressed

Wake me up when they bring out the "tungur knifur".

[depakid]

10. bring out the "tungur knifur".

For those of us who don't speak the language, what's the tunger knifer?

Sounds intriguing.

[Stockholm]

11. Heavy knife

Swedification of icelandic "Þungur hnífur".

Meaning good, solid, working knife - measurement of wealth. Also a quote from an Icelandic film.

Hrafninn flýgur - English title; Revenge of the barbarians.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087432/

[Arkana]

2. What is this "Iceland" you speak of

[Phred42]

3. As well they should - given what COnervative Ideology has done to them

After all, as anyone who has been paying attentions now knows:

The Conservative Movement, much like a Bowel Movement, is full of Shit.

:rofl:

[Thothmes]

7. try doing without one for a while

[Joanne98]

4. YAY

[Canuckistanian]

5. K&R

[Vidar]

6. Give 'em hell, Iceland!

[daleo]

8. Iceland has many volcanoes

Normally, I would be against human sacrifice...

[steven johnson]

9. Iceland set to elect first openly gay PM

Here's a first.

She is 67, white-haired and, with 31 years service as an MP under her belt, seems an unlikely symbol of a troubled nation's clamour for fresh leadership and new political blood.
But this weekend, when Iceland closes its polling booths, Johanna Sigurdardottir - quiet, elegant and bespectacled - is widely tipped to make modern political history by becoming the world's first openly lesbian prime minister, and ushering in a new feminine hierarchy.

A Social Democrat with a distinguished, if low-key, political pedigree, Ms Sigurdardottir is still affectionately remembered for a leadership challenge 15 years ago when she thrust a defiant fist in the air and declared: 'My time will come." Now a popular slogan in Iceland, it has been seen on T-shirts in the capital, Reykjavik.

In fact, Ms Sigurdardottir's "time" came in February when months of public protest and social unrest finally forced not only the resignation of the conservative prime minister, Geir Haarde, but also David Oddsson, Iceland's central bank governor and a former PM himself.

Polls have revealed that a majority of Icelanders want her to lead no matter what party wins and heads up a new governing coalition.


http://www.watoday.com.au/world/iceland-tipped-to-elect-first-openly-gay-pm-20090425-aifp.html?page=-1