The Battle Of Iceland

This coming Saturday a referendum will be held in Iceland. The people can say yes, we think we need a new constitution, or no, we think the old one is just fine. Once again Iceland is at a crossroads. A new constitution has been drafted and now it’s up to us to say if we think our country needs a fresh start.
With the big crash in October 2008, when all the Icelandic banks fell in the same week and the country found itself on the brink of national bankruptcy, people lost all faith in politicians, the whole political infrastructure, governmental institutions as well as bankers and businessmen. It was a total nervous breakdown of the Icelandic system. Iceland was in a state of shock.
First came sadness and mourning, then anger and fire, followed by a bloodless revolution and finally a leftist clean-up government, full of pride-swallowing compromises Obama-style. Slowly the land was brought back on its feet, but anger remained, though the loud swearing and bully-blogging now has mellowed into 24-hour whining on Facebook.
The guilty bankers and businessmen still go unpunished, hiding in luxury restaurants abroad, making jokes about the people, who still struggle at home, trying to repair the damage they left behind. The politicians, who steered us over the edge, with flawless inactivity, are mostly gone, though some linger on.
The man who was Minister of Business Affairs in 2008 still seeks re-election, to much sighing and eye-rolling, and the man who was head of the Central Bank (the world’s only one to go bankrupt) is now the editor of a big newspaper, and the fiercest critic of the people rebuilding his old bank and the economy. Sometimes life is just that simple.
But the political system has not changed and the Independence Party (the Fianna Fail of Iceland) still has not made their inevitable housecleaning. For a century it was the ruling force of Iceland. For the decades leading up to the crash it practically owned Iceland, from coast to courts, when it played out its free-market Thatcherian experiment that for a time was dubbed “The Icelandic Wirtschaftswunder” but eventually came to be known as one of the biggest economical bubbles in history. After the big crash, the Independence Party was forced out of government, and then suffered a heavy blow in the first post-crash elections in 2009. But according to the recent polls it’s gaining its former strength. We’re a bit afraid that this Fianna Fail will become our Gonna Fail.
Parliamentary elections are set for April 2013, and we know that if the Gonna Fail Guys will be back in charge, there won’t be any more housecleaning on the national level. No more thinking of a fresh start, to do things differently. We’ll go back to the old system of grown men in suits talking to grown men suits about grown men in suits. We’ll go back to the evil threesome of Money, Politics and Friends. That’s why, before this happens, we have to get a new constitution in place. We can’t afford to lose our country again. We want to build a decent and stable society, a society for all, a goodhearted meritocracy. And this will not be easy. This is quite a task. Since the Icelandic nation is so small, it only takes a handful of corrupt individuals to gain power. That’s why we’re in such a hurry. That’s why we need to put things straight. That’s why we have to vote yes on Saturday, yes to a new constitution. And that is also why the Gonna Fail Guys are voting no.
The old constitution dates from our Day of Independence in 1944, a “temporary” wartime thing, hurriedly drafted on the previous ones, dating from 1920 and 1874, the latter written by a Danish king for a Danish colony. Looking at those dates, a constitutional update is long overdue.
The new constitution is based on the outcome of a National Forum held in 2010 of one thousand citizens picked randomly from the national register. The people opposing it now claim those thousand people were “misled by the leftist government.”
The new constitution was written by a specific panel of 25 people picked in a referendum out of a pool of 500 people offering their services.
The people opposing a new constitution did not vote in that referendum. One even measured the thickness of the voting ballots and the height of the voting booths and managed to convince the Supreme Court of Iceland who annulled the referendum based on those charges. (!) So the promised Constitutional Assembly was turned into a Constitutional Council, but with a full mandate from the parliament. The opposition now calls its members “a bunch of leftist lunatics.” But let’s look at the main points of the constitution draft.
The new constitution states that a certain number of the population can call for a referendum on a certain issue. The opposition calls the referendum on Saturday “undemocratic.” The new constitution states that all our national resources shall be commonly owned by the Icelandic people.
And this is the main issue. Some privileged people might lose their privilege. For example, the present quota system in the fishing industry is totally feudal, with 20 sea barons “owning” the un-fished cod in the sea. They do so because “they always have” and because “they bought it from each other.” (Yes, some people have become rich by selling other people the right to fish “their” fish in the sea.) Of course, the sea barons fight the hardest against a new constitution, pouring their money into propaganda newspapers, websites and TV programs. Their lawyers and politicians now try their best to confuse people with lawspeak for lunatics: “What exactly does “commonly owned” mean?” The new constitution also states that in parliamentary elections all votes shall carry the same weight.
In the present system the votes of people living around the coastline carry more weight than people living in the city. The sea barons all live around the coastline.
The road leading up to the referendum on Saturday has been bumpy, to say the least. The opposition has been fierce and strong. Our system is still full of Gonna Fail Guys or people appointed by the Gonna Fail Guys. To give you an example: The Supreme Court that annulled the first referendum was all appointed by GFG. The main sponsors of the GFG are the sea barons. In parliament the GFG managed to delay the upcoming referendum by four months, by holding the parliament hostage for weeks by 24 hour filibustering.
So there is a battle going on. The battle of Iceland. A battle between the old castle, now out of power, but full of money, and the people in the square, the people who have some power for the time being, but are deadly afraid it won’t last more than this coming winter. To safeguard themselves they want to write a new set of rules before the Gonna Fail Game starts again. This is why the referendum on Saturday is quite important.
—
Hallgrímur Helgason is an Icelandic writer and artist. His most known books are ‘101 Reykjavik’ and ‘The Hitman’s Guide to Housecleaning. This article will appear in the Danish paper Politiken this coming Saturday.