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Part of the results show that the Icelandic government is expected to win a clear majority in Saturday’s election, but it remains to be seen whether the left-right coalition of Prime Minister Katrin Jakobsdottir (Katrin Jakobsdottir) agrees to remain in power.
After a decade of crisis, the three-party alliance brought four years of stability to Iceland.
After accounting for more than one-third of the votes, Jacobs Dottier’s left-wing Green Party, the conservative Independence Party, and the center-right Progressive Party won a total of 41 seats out of 63 seats in the parliament, which is higher than the previous ones. 33 seats.
But the left-green movement was seen by its right-wing partners, making Jacobs Dottir’s future as prime minister — and the alliance itself — questioned.
Jacobs Dottier told AFP: “We will have to look at how the various parties in the government cooperate and how we perform,” because some of the results show that her party has won 11 votes in parliament from 2017. One of the seats was lost.
However, a clear picture of the political landscape is expected to appear only when all votes are counted later on Sunday.
A total of eight parties are expected to win seats in Iceland’s nearly 1,100-year-old parliament.
The divided political landscape makes it difficult to predict which parties may eventually form coalitions.
“I know the result will be very complicated, and the formation of a new government will be very complicated,” Jacobs Dottier said.
On Saturday, September 25, 2021, Independence Party candidate Bjarni Benediktsson voted at a polling station in Gardaby, Iceland [Brynjar Gunnarsson/ AP]The largest party looks like it will still be the Independence Party, and its leader Bjarni Benediktsson-the current finance minister and former prime minister-is paying attention to Jacobs Dottir’s work.
People saw it won two seats, reaching 18.
“These numbers are good, (this is a) good start of the evening,” he told the public broadcaster RUV.
But the big winner of the election seems to be the center-right Progressive Party, which won 5 seats, reaching 13 seats.
Alliance holds talks
If partial results are confirmed, the Progressive Party will become the second largest party in Iceland, squeezing out the left-wing Green Party.
The party leader Sigdur Inge Johansson declined to say whether he would consider establishing a minority bipartisan government with the Independence Party.
“I will wait to comment on any possible government cooperation before we have a clearer result,” he told the public broadcaster RUV.
Eva Onudottir, a political scientist at the University of Iceland, told AFP that the current tripartite governments “it is possible” to decide to continue cooperation.
“The leaders of the three government parties have stated that if they maintain a majority after the election, they will naturally talk to each other.”
People line up to vote outside the polling station in Gardabe, Iceland on September 25, 2021 [Brynjar Gunnarsson/ AP]However, the only reason these three seem to remain in the majority is because the right side performed strongly, while the left side lost support.
“What will the left-wing Green Party do? We will see,” she said.
Since there will be eight political parties represented in the parliament, each party can look for multiple coalition options.
The “huge challenge” ahead
During her four-year tenure, Jakobsdottir introduced a progressive income tax system, increased the social housing budget and extended parental leave for both parents.
She is very popular and praised for handling the COVID-19 crisis, with only 33 deaths in this country of 370,000 people.
But she also had to make concessions to maintain the peace of her alliance, which may have cost her in the vote.
An election poster from the Social Democratic Union that reads the “green attack” in Reykjavik, Iceland on Wednesday, September 22, 2021 [Brynjar Gunnarsson/ AP]She said on Saturday that if it regains power, her party will focus on “the huge challenge of building the economy in a more green and sustainable way” and on addressing the climate crisis that “we need to take radical measures”.
This is the second time since 2008 that the government has ended its four-year term on this huge island, and it is also the first time since 2003 that the government has retained a majority of its seats.
From 2007 to 2017, Icelanders deeply distrusted politicians during multiple scandals and asked them to participate in public opinion polls five times.
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