(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
dag@nytid.no
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There is a significant difference between how international and Norwegian election commentators analyze the possible results after the parliamentary elections on Monday 14 September.
In Norway, the choice is often portrayed as yet another, more or less sad, choice between red and blue. Especially the game on the bourgeois side gets a lot of attention: Who wants to collaborate with whom? And who's mad about who today, because they didn't pose with him or him yesterday? It should also be said that some of the great expectations of the red-green government have not been fulfilled in the last four years: neither in terms of poverty reduction, environmental commitment or a more inclusive "the Norwegian vi", despite the attempts. Politics is not possible art. Politics are broken illusions.
At the same time, it is clear that in the 2009 election we are facing something completely different than in the previous parliamentary elections. This is clear in this week's Ny Tid, where we have talked to election researchers, media people and politicians in various northern European countries. And the picture that emerges is clear: It is the Progress Party's possible government participation, and party leader Siv Jensen's opportunities to become prime minister, which is the one, crucial question.
In Norway, this opportunity no longer seems so surprising or shocking. First, this successor to Anders Lange's party has moved a long way from the time it was founded on money from the apartheid regime in South Africa, as Dagens Næringsliv has revealed. FRP is also something else today, like most other parties, than when former chairman Carl I. Hagen in the 80s used a fake immigrant letter to get the first, important attention. And different than when liberals and extremists were thrown out of the party at the beginning of the 90s and 00s respectively. Today, the party appears to be fully professional. But that doesn't make the party any less problematic.
As it also appears in the book Right-wing populism in Western Europe, which is launched on 11 September, the FRP is part of a larger movement in today's Europe: a right-wing movement that has gained more influence after the terrorist attacks in the USA on 11 September. In Denmark, Pia Kjærsgaard and the Danish People's Party, the FRP's role model, have over the past eight years gained enormous influence over the bourgeois bourgeois parties. But there is something even more we now face on Monday. Jensen is a younger, more skilled and more future-oriented party leader than Kjærsgaard. Jensen will, by a bourgeois majority, be able to get exactly the government participation that Kjærsgaard has been denied for many years.
And it is wrong to think that right-wing populism is a foreign import, at least it is Scandinavian. The Progress Party in Denmark and the Progress Party in Norway were both founded in 1973, as the first in Europe. Denmark and Norway have thus been at the forefront in this field before. Now it can happen again.
On Monday, Norway can become a showcase for a right-wing populist party with government power in Europe. Jensen can do what Haider and Kjærsgaard never did. It provides perspectives. Therefore, Monday's election is first and foremost an election for or against Frp. It is a choice about what kind of Norway we want to create in the 21st century.
During these four years, SV has managed to show that it is a responsible party, not just an opposition party as it has been for four decades before. Minister of Finance and party leader Kristin Halvorsen has shamed most intimidation images. But at the same time, the party has lost part of its soul along the way. There have not been too many lawn demonstrations or dissents, on the contrary.
It's not just about how many camels you can swallow, but about how you look and feel after consuming another dromedary. The election result will determine the success, but SV could to a greater extent have discussed openly whether a government participation is the best for the party. Power is good for those who get a ministerial post, but if this now leads to the party losing its identity as a radical alternative to big brother Labor, and SV now losing even more parliamentary seats, one should rather leave government and find soul outside government offices .
As it is now, we lack more radical and globally oriented votes in the Storting. Therefore, a party like the Green Party, or for that matter a candidate like RV's Erling Folkvord, should also be represented. We need increased diversity in the Storting, not more simplicity.