Meet Your New Mayor, Reykjavík

It's official now. Jón Gnarr is going to be the next mayor of Reykjavík, Social Democrat Dagur B. Eggertsson is going to be the chairman of city council and, most importantly of all, the conservatives of Reykjavík are going to be benched this term.

I just want to repeat that: the Independence Party are not going to be in the city council majority. They will, instead, be in the opposition. Just like in parliament.

Man that felt good to say. Almost makes me want a cigarette or something. Am I an immature schadenfreude addict? You bet I am.

So what is this going to mean for the city? We don't know yet. But what I can tell you is, the two parties are negotiating their plan for the city, and you can take part in it via the website Betri Reykajvík, and submit your own ideas for what the new majority coalition can do.

Don't understand Icelandic? Don't worry - submit your suggestions in English anyway. In Gnarr's most recent interview with the Grapevine, currently in our new issue, the new mayor not only said he's going to have the website translated into English, he added:

"Every good thing in Iceland has come from abroad. It’s always been like that—it’s what Icelandic culture is made up of, and it’s created a diversity within our society. Ever since the island was settled. Our forefathers most likely came from abroad, you know.

Foreign influence enriches our culture and contributes greatly to creating a harmonious, diverse and multi-layered community. Enriching our culture is a personal ambition of mine, I am a fan of diversity and I abhor uniformity. A diverse community makes for a mature society, which is what we should strive for. "

You hear that? Every good thing in Iceland has come from abroad. Chin up, foreigners - you improve the country!

I gotta say, I have a good feeling about this guy. He might be feeling his way through his tasks, but you can't deny the clarity of his convictions.

E-Government

Most of you are probably aware by now that The Best Party and the Social Democrats have set up this neat little website, Betri Reykjavík, which allows people to give the currently-forming city coalition suggestions and ideas about what matters should be addressed, and how. It's a great idea, in my opinion. But I think we can take this farther.

US president Barack Obama, back when he was running for office and everyone loved him, once proposed that new non-emergency legislation be posted for five days on a special website, where the general public could read and comment on the bills. It was a fine idea, but logistically speaking it was just impossible to execute. We're talking about over 300 million people, for one, and about 10,000 bills are introduced to Congress every year.

However, Iceland has just over 300,000 people, and parliament hardly ever sees more than 200 bills submitted in a given term. We could very feasibly set up such a website here.

Actually, submitted bills can already be viewed online, at the parliament's website. Provided you know how to navigate it, you can see what bills are on the floor, where they are in the committee process, and what members of parliament have put their names to them. The only problem is, the parliament's website is frankly a mess. Something simpler to use - more streamlined and easy to navigate - would be well advised.

In addition, it'd also be a good idea if the gang over at Reykjavík city hall found a way to translate their website into other languages. Or at least into English. Plenty of people living in this town who are working, paying taxes, and otherwise contributing to our community might not have the best grasp of Icelandic, but that doesn't mean they're less worthy of taking part in the discussion of what goes on here.

Anyways, just a thought for Gnarr and company.

And the People Have Spoken

Welp, the results of the municipal elections are in, and as you might expect, all eyes were on Reykjavík. But the municipal elections around the country show some even more interesting trends.

The Best Party - originally created by comedian Jón Gnarr as a parody of Icelandic politics, but then turned into some kind of serious campaign - secured six of Reykjavík city council's fifteen seats. Right now, they're in coalition talks with the Social Democrats, who won three seats. Now, there's been talk that they might be better off teaming up with the Independence Party, but that's really not likely to happen. Yes, the conservatives won five seats, and only garnered 660 fewer votes than the Best Party, but philosophically and ideologically, the conservatives are pretty much the exact opposite of the Best Party.

Which is what made flipping through Morgunblaðið at the bakery today pretty funny. Apart from the headline - "Preparing for Power Grab" - they made it a special point to emphasize that Jón Gnarr hasn't called the Independence Party for coalition talks yet. They emphasized the hell out of that. Why is Morgunblaðið even pretending to be a neutral media source, I wonder? They might as well go ahead and stamp a giant blue eagle on the top of the banner now. Or officially call themselves "Sjallablaðið", the way everyone else does.

Anyway, what's more fun to pay attention to is how things went in the rest of the country.

All of the "big four" parties - the Independence Party, the Social Democrats, the Progressives and the Leftist-Greens - took hits in towns and villages all over Iceland.

The Progressives are finished in the capital area. They're just done. They managed to squeeze one person into Kópavogur town council, and another in Álftanes, but that's it. Nationwide, they secured 10.9% of the vote - down from 14.8% in the 2009 parliamentary elections, and also down from 11.8% in the 2006 municipal elections. I think Einar Skúlason - the Progressives' best chance in Reykjavík - was right when he said trust is something it can take years to earn back. Maybe the Progressives ought to go back to being the agricultural collectivist party from whence they originally came. With anti-EU sentiment running high among Icelanders, that'd certainly have a foothold, especially in the countrside, where the Progressives tend to do better anyways.

The Leftist-Greens took a pretty massive hit this year, too. They lost a seat in Reykjavík city council, but nationwide, their support ranked in at 9.6%. That's right - more people voted for the Progressives than for one of the parties currently in power in parliament. Furthermore, this number is down from 12.6% in the last municipal elections, and also down from 21.7% in last year's parliamentary elections. Personally, I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that they are in power, but the economy is still crap - last year, when the economy was crappier, they were seen as the guys who were likely to do a better job of running things. And factually speaking, unemployment is slowly dropping, Moody's has raised Iceland's financial ranking to stable, and the International Monetary Fund predicts a balanced budget by 2014. That's pretty remarkable, but isn't yet touching Icelandic homes tangibly enough for people to feel that change is being made.

The Social Democrats also took on losses. While they got about 30% of the vote both in 2006 and 2009, last Saturday they came in at 22.1%. Again, if you want reasons, look no further than the economy.

Now, while the Social Democrat Prime Minister has said that these results indicate the sun setting on the "big four" system, and the Leftist-Green Foreign Affairs committee chairman said everyone should be doing some serious reflection of their platforms, one party was having none of that humility and self-examination talk: the Independence Party.

It's true that the conservatives finished with 37.4% of the vote last Saturday - more than any other party on a national level - and that this figure is up from 23.7% in 2009's parliamentary elections. But we're talking about the Independence Party here. They've been around forever. They're the party of the establishment, and so seeing them plummet to single-digit support within the span of a couple of years after literal decades of control just isn't going to happen.

They are firmly entrenched in a number of municipalities around the country; namely Ísafjörður, Garðabær, Reykjanesbæ and the Westman Islands. They either held or gained their position in all of these towns. However, they also lost Reykjavík, Kópavogur, Akranes, and Akureyri - all large to mid-sized Icelandic towns. Again, within the context of history, this is a real punch in the gut to the conservatives, and they'd do well to stop patting themselves on the back and start thinking up a new game plan.

In any event, in case you missed our election liveblog, you can check it out here. It was a fun night, I have to say. One of those times that makes me proud to be living in Iceland.

Spare Change

So at work today, I managed to catch bits and pieces of a radio "debate" between current Reykjavík mayor Hanna Birna Kristjánsdóttir and Best Party chairman Jón Gnarr. Because my day job requires me to do actual work, and not just pretend to work while listening to the radio, I wasn't able to catch as much of it as I wanted to, but what I did hear kind of surprised me.

For one, Jón sounded like a politician, while Hanna Birna sounded frankly annoyed and defensive. I suppose that stands to reason, seeing how The Best Party has taken a huge bite out of every party, hers included.

Jón took issue with his campaign being called a "joke party", or actually, with anything he says or does being seen as comedy in some form or another.

Alright, I thought, this is a bit like the Jón Gnarr in our latest issue's interview with him - a serious politician. I was surprised to learn, for example, that dude is actually serious about setting up a toll booth between Seltjarnarnes and Reykjavík, telling us, "I only think of it as normal that they would have to contribute to our city’s funds, as they use a lot of our services—we put out their fires, for instance. At a time when we have to cut back on our services due to lack of funds, they—the richest community in Iceland—brag about paying the lowest taxes in the country."

OK then! No more Jón Gnarr and His Whacky Parody Campaign; meet Jón Gnarr, Serious Mayoral Contender.

In the radio debate, the subject of city planning came up. Gnarr was asked for his thoughts. The first thing he mentioned was that he wanted to change the kinds of trees planted in the downtown area to trees that are nicer to look at. He also feels the bridge over the pond Tjörnin needs to be prettied up. And he wants to move Árbæjarsafn downtown.

Where have I heard this kinda stuff before?, I thought to myself. Oh right - this reminded me of when Independence Party candidate Gísli Marteinn Baldursson talked a couple years back about how nice it would be to have an outdoor ice skating rink downtown.

Meanwhile, we have a horrible mass transit system, no downtown bike paths, condemned houses standing empty, and construction projects half-finished. Yet the first thing this supposedly serious mayoral contender mentions with regards to city planning are the kinds of trees we have planted?

I've said before that I feel this is a celebrity campaign. I'm not really sure about that anymore. I really believe in Jón Gnarr's sincerity. He's an incredibly clever guy, and he seems very passionate about wanting to shake things up, foment cultural revolution, wipe the slate clean and start over. But how? And then what? I'm not even sure he really knows himself. His heart's in the right place, though, and I think people pick up on that.

Some food for thought, though: The Civic Movement (Borgarahreyfingin) was another party that wanted to shake things up and bring people closer to the government. They had a stronger platform, but didn't have nearly the star power that The Best Party has. The Civic Movement won four of parliament's 63 seats. The Best Party is projected to win half of city council's 15 seats.

The proportional difference is significant, and makes me wonder how many of The Best Party's supporters are voting for changing the system, and how many are just voting for Jón Gnarr.

Politics Is Serious Business

As many of you know, The Best Party - a joke party created by comedian Jón Gnarr - has been kicking the tar out of every other party running for city council. Up until now, his opponents have offered vague platitudes in response. Well, today the gloves came off.

Ármann Jakobsson, who has worked closely within the Leftist-Green Party, recently posted a blog entry detailing all the reasons why he believes Jón Gnarr is largely more sympathetic with the right than the left.

He mentions, among other things, that Gnarr was one of Independence Party MP Guðlaugur Þór Þórðarsson's supporters. He also told the Grapevine in 2006 that he supported former Independence Party mayoral candidate Gísli Marteinn Baldursson. Ármann also brings up the long string of conservative Christian columns Gnarr wrote for the newspaper Fréttablaðið a few years back.

OK, that's certainly notable. And it would give Ármann's article more weight if he stuck to facts like this. Instead, he adds to his point that Gnarr spends more time making fun of leftists than he does conservatives, the main example being his Georg Bjarnfreðarson character. That seems like reaching a bit to me, to be honest. It makes the leftists look, frankly, scared and defensive. And they certainly have reason to be scared.

Gnarr also granted The Grapevine a new interview in our latest issue. Among other things, he talks about his punk rock past and his anarchist tendencies. This I find interesting in context with the above mentioned facts.

I had a friend who used to call libertarians "closeted Republicans", and there's definitely a kernel of truth to that. Anarchists, libertarians, conservatives - many of them derive from the same ideology of personal freedom over the needs of the collective, a distrust of regulation and law, and the belief that the smaller the government the better. It's not very difficult, ideologically speaking, to shift gears between being an anarchist and being a rightist.

Now, I say all this knowing full well that there are many, many different schools of anarchist, libertarian and conservative thought. Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck have next to nothing in common with, say, Steve Ignorant. My point is solely that what Ármann is pointing out isn't that hard to believe, really, and doesn't necessarily contradict anarchist leanings.

Having said that, I think Gnarr is not very easy to pin down politically. He doesn't hail from the right or the left, and seems to have contempt for both. His ideas stem rather from wanting to fight against what he sees as the biggest problem with politics in this country: stagnation and nepotism. But in any event, you can read the interview in the latest issue and judge for yourself.

In Cops We Trust

Ah, polls. You can always count on polls to neatly condense complex issues into simple, snappy numbers. And they also happen to make great copy - easy to write, easy to read. Nothing perks up an otherwise slow news day like a nice poll.

Two recent polls grabbed my attention. The first, as most of you know, is that comedian Jón Gnarr's joke party Besti flokkurinn ( lit. "The Best Party") is now polling high enough to win six of Reykjavík city council's 15 seats.

This news was followed by some strong reactions from the party's opponents - that there's nothing funny about playing with the future of our children, that the joke has gone too far, and so forth.

It's unfortunate that reacting in this manner to The Best Party makes you look like a humorless square. After all, The Best Party is packed with actors, comedians, musicians and artists on the list. They are decidedly cooler than parties who actually have platforms.

A lot of people are saying that The Best Party has proved that people are unsatisfied with "The Four Parties", as they are known - the conservatives, the Progressives, the Social Democrats and the Leftist-Greens. This is wrong. What the groundswell of support for the Best Party largely means is that being an entertainer with no platform trumps being a politician who has one. There are actually eight parties running for city council right now, none of them polling nearly as well as The Best Party, and all of them have platforms.

On the other hand, I have to admit, the Four Parties have done an excellent job on their own in utterly ruining the trust of this town's residents. These past few years have seen the majority coalition swing from right to left to right again, and the in-fighting within some parties has been facepalm-inducing. I personally prefer parties who have platforms. It means you can hold them accountable. The Best Party is hedging their bets - by offering nothing, you can't say they never followed through if you're disappointed with their performance.

But I can understand why people would want to see Jón Gnarr as our next mayor. It's an admittedly tempting thought - I think he's a brilliant and genuinely all-around nice guy. Let's just hope he can actually deliver if it happens.

Speaking of trust, a new poll from Market and Media Research shows that, apparently, we trust cops a whole lot more than we trust the government, the media, and the ruling parties. 78.9% said they trust the police a great deal, with only 7.4% distrusting them. At the same time, 19.3% trust the ruling coalition a great deal while 58.9% don't trust it much; 15.4% trust the media a lot while 46.9% trust it very little, and only 10.5% trust parliament as a whole, with 56.4% saying they do not trust it much at all.

Here's my amateur, absolutely-no-schooling-in-psychology explanation of these numbers:

Just as the instability within city hall has helped contribute to support for The Best Party, politicians on the national level have changed hands due to early elections brought on by public protests. Today, the economy is still weak, but getting better - which is why the ruling coalition polls slightly better than the house of parliament in general - but people still associate parliament with insecurity and, with the release of the SIC report, even more so with corruption. Policemen, on the other hand, are always policemen. That you can count on.

Yep, polls are fun. Always great copy.