A brilliant recap of 2009 by reporter Magnus Geir Eyjolfsson from Pressan.is
The IceSave issue finally closed yesterday with the historic vote of Althingi, ending one of the most humiliating year for politics ever, in an appropriate manner I must say. Never before has such a large group of people embarrassed itself as thoroughly and disappointed its people as much as those who fill Althingi’s chambers today. The men’s national football team doesn’t even come close.
The start of the year 2009 promised so much. A limp government was chased out by the people which had empowered it. A New Iceland was supposed to rise from the ashes but as I have said before, this New Iceland is one of the worst sort of nations that can be found anywhere in the world.
A leftist government was voted in which was totally natural as it was the Iceland of the Independence Party which was flushed down the drain. The new government claimed it would be emphasise “nordic welfare”. And that was the first mistake of this government. Someone should have called their PR people and tell them that you don’t promise nordic welfare when the largest budget cuts and tax hikes in the history of the nation are approaching. So the government made false promises right in the beginning. It gave hope based on nothing. Instead it should have called itself the “Ajax government”, or something in that manner to indicate to the public that it was there to clean up the mess left behind by other parties.
Tsunamis do not only wash what it can find on the shore into the sea, but also leve behind all sorts of junk. The same happened in the Althingi elections this spring. We got rid of lots of incompetent people, but unfortunately more junk washed up on Althingi. Few people have ever been as disappointing as the new MP’s we got. The Citizens’ Movement exploded in a short period because three of its MP’s were already trading favors, something they promised they’d fight. The results of the elections were as sad as they could possibly be as far as the quality of new MP’s goes.
Little has been heard of the new MP’s for the government parties but the novices from the opposition have not exactly enhanced the respect of Althingi. Experience has tought me that people who cannot open their mouth without screaming and disreputing others are off balance. MP’s do not refrain from using words such as “liar”, “treason” and “evildoers”. The paranoia is so strong that you would think that these people are on mescaline. The crew around the Progressive Party’s chairman is especially bad. Those people are off-balanced.
The only thing people wanted when the election was over was that everyone should now work together for the nation, not the political parties. And the parties failed on the first exam which was the EU vote. The Progressive Party did a total U-turn, even if the bill fitted its emphasis’ perfectly. The monster of opportunity simply dwelled to shallowly within the party. The Independence Party had its own interests at heart even if Thorgerdur Katrin and Ragnheidur Rikhardsdottir stayed true to their conviction. The attack they had to endure from their own party, not least the extreme-right was at best disgusting. The EU isssue showed us who really hold the reins of the Independence Party.
The government blew the issue badly by not reaching out for a bi-partisan conclusion. It is given that EU membership won’t be approved without the Independence Party. Bjarni Beneditktsson and Steingrimur J. Sigfusson have already said that any agreement with the EU is a bad agreement in their mind. The EU bus caught a flat before taking off.
To top the whole craziness, David Oddson was pulled up by the fishing-quota billionaires who bought Morgunbladid. There he attempts to write history in his favour, totally excluding any hope of peace and togetherness within the society. I am absolutely sure that we would laugh out loud if we read in the news that the Central Bank manager of Zimbabwe would be made editor of the most respected newspaper in the country. Does no one see the madness?
Which brings me to the next issue which is the attitude within Iceland towards the outside world. It seems like there has been an agreement made within the country that the economic crash in Iceland was due to the unfairness of other nations. Each and every trace of self-examination which was evident at the begining of the year has disappeared. Foreigners are cursed and the blood of business vikings is called for, but nobody seems prepared to examine what exactly went wrong here in Iceland.
The IceSave issue has not helped. It was badly managed, by both sides, government and opposition. I have changed my mind several times myself, because I fear the consequences of what happens if we pay, as I do if we don’t. Only time will tell, but I, along with most Icelanders I dare say are first and foremost ecstatic that it is over for now. And I think that we have done what was right in the end.
Hopefully, MP’s will use their New Years Eve break to carefully think about what they can do to make Iceland bearable again. Althingi’s Investigation Committee’s report will hopefully lead to a decent cleaning out. That, along with the mountain of cases forming on the desk of the Special Prosecutor, is the last rope the nation can cling onto if it wants real reform. Fact is that the situation is not as bad as we feared in the beginning. But while this reckoning is missing, the nation cannot move forward. To move on without it would be like prescribing ibufen for a brain tumor.
We have already spent one year in vain. Let’s not let another go to waste.
Magnus Geir Eyjolfsson – reporter, December 31, 2009.
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Iri
2 years ago
Icelanders pinned so much hope and faith in the “new Iceland” yet it seems they were let down miserably. I hope 2010 is a better year for your country