(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
It is a historic choice Norway faces on Monday 14. September. At least according to international correspondents, parties and researchers in northern Europe.
If the Progress Party, as the polls allow, enters the government and party leader Siv Jensen gets the post of prime minister, she will be history's first head of government from a right-wing populist party in Europe. The closest person to date is Jörg Haider (1950-2008). But he left 2000 this year as party leader to get his Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) into government, then under a government chief from the Conservatives.
However, right-wing populist parties outside Europe are now reaping hope.
- We hope that the Progress Party ensures a clear election winner in Norway!
It writes Arnout Collier from the Belgian Vlaams Belang in an email to Ny Tid. The party is considered one of the most extreme right-wing populist parties in Europe.
The inspiration lies in the fact that Frp gets a government coalition with the Right, which is precisely the goal for more people like Vlaams Belang in Europe. Collier and Vlaams Belang follow the Norwegian election closely and with interest.
- If the FRP forms a coalition with an established conservative party such as the Conservative Party, this confirms that the FRP's right-wing views and analyzes have gained ground and have been accepted among a wider section of the Norwegian population, Collier believes.
- This is a development we see all over Europe. In the last ten years, Europeans have moved in the right direction on the political scale, claims the spokesman from Vlaams Belang.
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The next step will be to join the Progress Party and Siv Jensen in an international movement for right-wing parties in Europe.
- This changed mentality can only have a direct political impact if all right-wing parties in Europe, within and outside the EU, coordinate their demands. Only then can we solve the societal problems in Europe, such as immigration and the lack of democracy. Europeans' calls for fundamental solutions are acute and legitimate, Collier and Vlaams Belang write to Ny Tid.
Elisabeth Ivarsflaten is associate professor at the University of Bergen and has researched commonalities between right-wing parties in Europe. Here's how she comments on the play from the disputed Belgian party:
- FRP probably does not want to be compared with Vlaams Belang, which is quite brown politically, says Ivarslaten. And this is how she comments on how the world will react if the FRP takes over government power on Monday:
- There will be guaranteed international notices, that's for sure. The image of self-righteous, rich Norwegians who give power to the right-wing radicals, it will create attention. But I do not think you get the same international political reaction that the Austrian FPÖ got when they went into government nine years ago, Ivarsflaten assumes.
Also in other European countries, Monday's Norwegian elections are followed with argus eyes. Especially in Denmark and Sweden, the political balance of power can be greatly affected if Frp and Siv Jensen win the power. Swedish journalist journalist Björn Lindahl, who is Oslo correspondent for Svenska Dagbladet, has covered the Norwegian elections since 1981. He points out that it is Frp's progress that is the most interesting in the election, seen with Swedish eyes. Aftonbladet recently mentioned Siv Jensen at the leader's seat as "hoping" for the Norwegian bourgeois parties.
Inspired by Frp
- In Sweden, the Swedish Democrats have not yet entered the Riksdag, but they are well into the municipalities. They are inspired by the Danish authorities' tightening of immigration policy as well as the Progress Party's path to the top through municipal politics, Lindahl says.
He thus refers to how Frp has gradually gained more and more local power over the last decade by joining various coalitions in city governments such as in Oslo and Bergen. Lindahl points out that the measurements today show that in one year the nationalist and right-wing Sweden Democrats will be able to cross the barrier of four per cent, and thus have real influence in the Swedish parliament.
- They will be able to decide whether there will be red or blue government. But in Sweden, voters are more faithful to the blocs than in Norway, and have a harder time going from red to blue.
One has a more chaotic political situation in Norway, because the interesting thing about Frp is that a large part of their voters are workers, who are also concerned with red politics. We do not find such trends much in Sweden, says Lindahl.
In Denmark, too, the Progress Party is being closely monitored. BI researcher and FRP member Asle Toje recently received a large interview in Politiken about his Danish-inspired culture war debate, in which he praised recently resigned Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen. In Politiken August 12, Lars Trier Mogensen, editor of the leadership college, recommended that Danish social democrats and the leftist people copy Stoltenberg's method of making Frp the main opponent: civil government. ”
Danish impact
In Denmark, for the past eight years, Pia Kjærsgaard's Danish People's Party, a reporter of the Danish Progress Party, has had a great influence on the politics of the Left-led minority government, but without coming to the table of power.
But not only the Danish People's Party is a possible partner for Frp, which has drawn a number of proposals from Danish politics in recent years. At the end of March, central Danish left-wing politician Inger Støjberg, who a month later became the government's gender equality minister, spoke at FRP's national meeting. Støjberg then told the Norwegian media that there are "great similarities" between the Danish Left and the Norwegian Progress Party.
- In the Danish government, it will probably be said that Norway follows Denmark. When it comes to international cooperation, reducing financial support to the UN, EU skepticism and lowering aid funds, the FRP is completely in line with the Danish People's Party, says Rune Stubager, election researcher at the University of Aarhus.
He points out that with Siv Jensen in government in Norway, it can become even more difficult in the future to mobilize against Pia Kjærsgaard in government in Denmark.
- This can take the wind out of the social democratic opposition here in Denmark, Stubager says to Ny Tid.
Lars Halskov, a journalist in Danish Politiken, recently visited Bodø to investigate how Frp has grown so much. He believes the secret is a mixture of the Danish People's Party's asylum policy and the liberalism of the Danish Left.
- Many Danes are wondering how it is possible that a right-wing party may have received such support. But a particularly Norwegian phenomenon is the Oil Fund, which allows Frp and provides tax relief, while at the same time demanding the development of the welfare state, says Halskov.
Read more in the paper edition of Ny Tid
