If a whole election would be ruled illegal by the supreme court in any civilized nation, the minister responsible for the election would surely resign.
In the case of the Icelandic constitutional assembly elections, that would be the minister of interior. But try to tell that one to Ogmundur Jonasson.
After all, the call for constitutional reform was not just to change around a few words on a piece of paper. It was a demand for political reform. A new way of doing things, including politicians assuming more responsibility.
The most serious charge against the vote as it was carried out is that the ballots were easily identified by barcodes and numbers. A mind-boggling oversight on the parts of the organizers. Yet, things remain the same in Iceland. Blame is assigned elsewhere by anyone remotely connected to the execution.
But of course things are more complicated than that. The Supreme Court is part of what needs to reform. It might have had perfectly good reasons to overturn the whole election, but the way the justices have been appointed does little to enhance trust in the judicial system. It does not take a whole lot of stretch of imagination to question the motives of the three Independence Party insiders who ran and were the only ones out of 498 candidates who lost who saw reason to question the process.
There are no precedents of nationwide elections being ruled illegal in Iceland. There are six examples of local elections though, the most interesting being the one in Borgarbyggd in 2002, when outside ballots were questioned. In that case the Independence Party’s representative was against invalidating the result and went to court to try to overrule the decision. The vote was eventually repeated. The IP rep was one Odinn Sigthorsson, the very same who is one of the three who challenged the constitutional assembly vote.
And now they bark about money down the drain and that the whole thing should be called off.
The truth of the matter is that Iceland probably can not afford not to repeat the vote. This has to go through.
Because if there are going to be words on a piece of paper for politicians to ignore, it is better that those words are written by the people, for the people. Even if some of the people don’t care for that at all.
But if the current government is serious about reform, then one or two resignations every now and then will enhance its reputation in the minds of the 50% of Icelanders who currently do not put their trust in any particular party.
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Michael Schulz
1 year ago
Tx. Very interesting. And very important – incl. for Iceland and the media sector – that you keep writing and breaking the Icelandic language shield behind which corrupted politics and business were and again are hiding from the world.
On the constitutional assembly: a farce from a-z. It doesn’t matter that 34% voted but that 66% did not vote! If those that were elected had had any decency they would have resigned immediately once the results were known. None did resign which tells me all. Just hope – but don’t believe – they won’t throw more good money after bad.
QED: Is Kreppa over !? No, of course not. Its getting worse.
Its a sad state of affaires in Iceland.
Cheers,
Michael