Þessi pistill birtist í (frekar slakri) þýskri þýðingu í tas í Berlín fyrir helgi.
To begin: an anecdote. The Icelandic
State Radio RÚV has on it's homepage an election test, designed to help us
– the people – find the candidates whose opinions most accurately
reflect our own. In the test we, like the candidates, are asked about the most
common issues which we grade on a sliding scale: Do we agree 94% that Iceland
should accept more asylum seekers? Do we disagree 13% that kindergartens should
be privatised? 29% that kindergarteners organs should be harvested? What do we
think about allowing alcohol to be sold in convenient stores – could we perhaps
not care less?
When I took this test the candidate
whose opinions most accurately matched mine was Ásthildur Ósk Ragnarsdóttir,
for Björt Framtíð – a newish social-democrat party. Ásthildur Ósk Ragnarsdóttir
also happens to be „Hilda“ – my childhood sweetheart, the girl I was insanely
in love with from age six to about eleven, when she brutally broke my heart and
dumped me by mail. (Spoiler alert: I won't be voting for her).
So. If you want to understand Icelandic
democracy, the first thing to note is that due to the size of the population
– 340 thousand people, whereof around 245 thousand are eligible to vote
– Iceland doesn't much function like a nation, in the continental
understanding of that word. Iceland is a kind of a family gathering, a feast slightly
larger than a Greek wedding, where the guests happen to share their own common
language and a natural border.
The next thing to note is that with
12 political parties and 1.307 candidates running for 63 seats in a single
house of parliament, 1 out of every 187 possible voters is also a candidate.
As is to be expected with a nation
of this size, almost everyone on the voters registry is at least distantly
related to almost everyone else and the probability of anyone being at least
semi-closely related to a high-ranking candidate – or knowing them personally –
is therefore great. To put it mildly.
So every time I criticize a
political party on my Facebook feed, I need to state clearly, that my criticism
does not refer to my friend Gylfi, my cousin Magnús, the wife of my friend Smári,
the grandfather of my sons best friend, nor indeed my childhood sweetheart
Hilda – who are indeed the only
representives of said parties worth their weight, and if only their parties
were more like them, perhaps they would be electable.
For if I don't single them out and
except them from the apparent evils of their parties, they will see it and
anger-like it, and that will make our next social gathering either embarassing
or violent. The only way to maintain this illusion of nationhood – or
indeed that of a functioning democracy – is through intense denial and
clinical codependency.
Historically Iceland has been led
by a coalition of the libertarian conservatives of the Independence Party and
the national conservatives of the Progressive Party, sometimes supported by
either of the two traditional left parties. I.e. farmers, chieftains and class
traitors. Only once – from 2009-2013, right after the financial collapse
– has the country been led by the left, without support or concessions to
the right. Four years of diluted socialism during a time when much of the
country's economical policy was decided by the International Monetary Fund – in
a history that reaches back to 930 AD. (Granted, Alþingi's contemporary form is
only about a 170 years old – before that Alþingi was mostly run by
chieftains, foreign kings and heathen priests, which are demographics I have no
problem with defining as thoroughly right wing).
This year, though, things are
supposed to be different. For one thing the Pirates – a party hard to pin down
in the chieftains, farmers and class traitors model – are polling at around
20%, despite the right's rabid attempts at painting these often colorful
characters as deceitful, melodramatic crybabies and out-of-control hypocrits. The
biggest scandal they've managed to pin on the Pirates so-far is that one of
their leaders once imprecisely stated his education. On a LinkedIn profile. From
2006.
The Social-Democrats in Samfylkingin
– having spent their days in government trying to force-feed a non-willing
public with an EU-application (now canceled) and the very unpopular
Icesave-agreements – are slowly but surely disappearing. Considering that
two decades ago, the party was literally formed in order to unite the left
under one banner, that is insane. Their name – Samfylkingin – even means
„the coalition“. With that name, you can't poll at the bare minimum.
Meanwhile, most of the
Social-Democrat following, that hasn't escaped to the Pirates, has gone to
Björt Framtíð („Bright Future“ – perhaps named so to emphasis the obvious: the
only thing they don't share with Samfylkingin is their „bleak past“) and
to the more right-leaning, Viðreisn, popularly seen as a more liberal(ist)
split from the Independence party.
For a full picture of the
opposition to chieftains and farmers add to this two populist parties, Dögun
(Dawn) and Flokkur Fólksins (The People's Party), a semi-communist party called
Alþýðufylkingin, the Humanists and the nationalists of Þjóðfylkingin – who
though newly formed seem to have already imploded in a chaos of accusations,
insinuations and malpractice, causing many to claim that the most powerful
anti-fascist mechanism, when properly harnessed, is the unending stupidity of
fascists themselves.
But stray voters have a tendency to
find their way home in the end. Party insiders are now trembling from election
jitters, grasping at straws in every available. Of course they all claim to be
the only one (in this Greek wedding) with a long term memory. Don't you remember when cousin Siggi drank
up all the Ouzo? Have we already forgotten who's responsible for yesteryears
rotten baklava? If we again hire the
same horrible DJ, I'm going home!
And to tell you the truth, having
seen my country try and make many changes in the past years – a new
constitution (stranded), anarcho-populist reform in Reykjavík (technocratism
and liberal lip service), jailing bankers (it's complicated, but ultimately
unsatisfying), overthrowing the right wing government (only to vote them back
in) – I'm fairly certain that after the weekend, we will be returning to a
status quo of farmers and chieftains. The best we can hope for, is a few class
traitors. Whereupon, of course, we'll start hoping for a new revolution.
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