Representatives from all parties running for Reykjavík city council were guests on yesterday’s roundtable discussion show Silfur Egils, where comedian and musician Sigurjón Kjartansson of The Best Party – a joke party created to satirize Icelandic politics – promised that his party would be corrupt, but openly so.
“We will most certainly show favoritism to our personal friends,” Kjartansson said. “We will have corruption above the table; not under it. But we don’t have any amoral friends.”
He added that he believes the problem with the Independence Party is that they are always having to defend their amoral friends – a problem his party will not have.
Other ideas he brought up were to combine the town of Kópavogur with Reykjavík into one municipality. “To not have Kópavogur in Reykjavík would be like separating Manhattan from New York,” he said.
He said The Best Party is prepared to form a majority with any of the other parties running, so long as they’re fun. He stressed that it was important for meetings to be fun, otherwise their elected officials won’t feel like coming to work.
City council elections are scheduled for 29 May. Foreigners who have been living in Iceland for at least five years (or, if you’re Scandinavian, three years) have the right to vote in the municipality where they have legal residence.