(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
[election] It is completely wrong to say that it has been a disorder to read through all party programs – as they are posted on the internet – before the municipal election in Oslo. You actually learn quite a lot from reading what the parties claim to stand for, and I would encourage everyone to study the programs – not only to make a more informed choice, but also to understand what the local politicians are actually doing. Too few are genuinely concerned with local politics, and we certainly do not get too much backing from centralist media that let the usual national political frontrunners talk about anything other than the specific issues this election is actually about.
This year's election campaign has also been deadly boring. The fact that Martin Kolberg went out in the early phase of the fair and called the election a referendum on the red-green project helped to make the whole thing public. For local elections, it is not necessarily about ideological doubts. No, even RV / Roodt's mayoral candidates around the country emphasize the solution-oriented focus of local politics. In the big cities, of course, there is more talk of ideological choices, but the programs from the Oslo parties show that there is more that unites than separates. In the middle of the reading, it is then that you have to stop and think about: What party is it that has written this? Here there is climate, public transport, full daycare and a better school for a full mouth. Everyone wants good for the city with the Big Heart.
Right: Effective Fuzzles
The Oslo Conservatives' program consists of an accumulation of pretty and uncontroversial phrases. Oslo is "the creative city with the warm heart", and apart from the fact that it can be questioned whether a city can be creative, it is a nice statement. City councilor Erling Lae smiles gently and light blue at us in the program's introduction, and says, among other things, that the Oslo Conservatives have been "the driving force behind Fjorbyen" (sic!). Ah, typos are not what should characterize a political program, at least not from the formed school party Conservatives. That the Progress Party's program has infinitely many typos and strange sentence constructions is one thing – and we will come back to that! – but the Conservatives should definitely have weeded out such things in the last round of proofreading.
Otherwise, the program is effective, with point-by-point statements and not too wordy introductions. The language is politically dry and sometimes rather bland. "The great value of culture lies in the cultural expression itself," the Conservatives claim, among other things, and that is certainly correct, that, perhaps?
Ap: Fancy, but unengaging
The Labor Party has the most money and the best contacts in resourceful advertising agencies. Their program for the next period is then also the most inviting. It is sprinkled with easy-to-understand everyday examples, and Rune Gerhardsen smiles nicely and fatherly side by side with her mayoral candidate, whose name no one remembers. Here, great men like Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy are quoted, and the party certainly shows that it is in line with popular culture when they present the following DeLillos line: "We cut down some trees, and build parks here." That a much more confrontational Lars Lillo in the song actually sings "They cut down trees, and build parks here", is now so.
The party wants to create a broad and overarching narrative about the capital in 2007. The problem is that their story is rarely particularly engaging. Labor tries to be fresh and "exciting", but there is something sideways and politically correct about the otherwise visually beautiful program. It is also a bit depressing that a party with deep roots on the eastern edge hardly problematizes the increasingly class-divided city of Oslo.
Hardcore Red, cloudy SV
Then different with little RV / Red, which really drives hardcore. As usual from that edge, the program is far like a bad year, and the language is harsh, unsentimental and reasonably internal. But politics is fortunately always at the center, and RV's analyzes of why the "right-wing" Oslo is an unsocial and unfair city seen with red eyes, permeate the entire text. "It is the capital that governs Oslo and the capital that governs the city council", it is declared bluntly, at the same time as the language is AKP-radical with a-endings a lot. Party and slogan, it's called there in the yard.
SV's program is considerably tamer. The prose oozes good Grünerløkka formation, and is difficult to get a foothold in. Sure, SV is still a "socialist party", but what it might mean in 2007 is not very well explained. Oslo SV is also "feminist", must know, and that is why one must smile a little when it is written that "it is good socialist and feminist policy to limit our emissions of greenhouse gases and to reduce our consumption". What CO2 emissions have to do with gender is a bit unclear. The language is otherwise so radically appropriate and certainly not a small passage emerges about the necessity of supporting Palestine in the last section of the program.
YOU in the center
The Liberal Party has a kind of key position in Oslo politics, even though the party is as critical of its bourgeois partners as Tony Blair was of George W. Bush. "YOU are the boss", it is claimed in a good newspaper left-wing spirit, and the program is like Liberal politics in general, liberal and pleasant. The text is liberating financially with the words and very neat, although it is not fortunate that the point-by-point statements (the program consists so to speak only of points) are written in italics. As my old teacher at Blindern once pointed out: Italics are not very readable!
The programs of the other two center parties are very different in form and content, even though both the Center Party and KrF have a "heart for Oslo", they too. The Center Party, which is a promille party in Tigerstaden, spends a striking amount of space emphasizing the importance of green lungs, parks, allotment gardens and old wooden house environments. And as the only party, they are concerned with the royal farm on Bygdøy: "The land on Kongsgården can not be used for anything other than agricultural purposes", it is stated in an otherwise clear, but dry program.
KrF, for its part, has an educated, well-written and quite good program, which really tells what the party stands for and what values it bases its policy on. But like most other parties, the Christian Democrats' text is also characterized by obviousness: "KrF wants to make Oslo a better city", is the opening sentence, and it is almost as if you draw a sigh of relief considering what forces they have on the team .
Funny FRP isms, urban understanding
Then to the party with the weird name Progress Party. It is a pity to have to say that, but all the prejudices against the FRP seem to come true when the first line of the program proclaims that "the Progress Party is a liberal party". Carl I. Hagen is well known for putting a tremendous amount of pressure on the usually dumb ending t in the party name, but this is probably in excess. The program is marred by typos, intricate sentences and funny wording such as "The Oslo Progress Party is concerned that the environmental debate seems to concentrate only on fragments of environmental problems, combined with certain instruments becoming goals in themselves." Or: «Immigrants have become very visible in the statistics on certain types of violent and profiteering crimes. It is not immoral to think that one must take into account reactions to this immigration in order to prevent conflicts. " But sympathetically enough, it is stated that the party is positive about the growing family: "Oslo Progress Party considers young people to be a resourceful group."
Outsider Oslo Byaksjon is several notches up on the language quality scale. "Oslo Program 2.0" is the name of their hypermodern manifesto for the next city council term. The program is engrossingly written, the fountain is beautiful and the analyzes interesting and relevant. Still: The text is far too long and looks more like a dissertation from the School of Architecture than a political program written to seduce voters. Ambitious concepts such as "transformation model", "temporary autonomous zones", "social entrepreneurs" and "growth energy" are obviously suitable for the initiates. For others, it can probably be the toughest team to keep up with the turns.
