Words by

Haukur S. Magnússon and Andie Sophia Fontaine

Us at the Grapevine love the city of Reykjavík. It is surely our favourite city. We believe it is one of the best places in the world to do a lot of the things we like doing. Why else would we live here?

Since we love it so much, we certainly care about what goes on here, too, and how the place is run. And guess what, a week from now we’ll be voting fresh new city officials in office. This in mind, we thought we’d get representatives from “THE BIG FOUR” (Iceland’s “mainstay” political parties, those that have been around for a long time and are all part of our “political establishment”) to answer some questions about their platform, their parties and their intentions if voted into office. After all, we are read by a bunch of folks that will be directly affected by the elections’ outcome, and who will be casting their votes for some of them come Election Day.

So we called all of them up, and all of them were quite enthusiastic to be interviewed. Oh they had some quips. We said: “Can we please do this by phone, as we tried the e-mail thing for the national elections last year and all the answers came in way too late, and they were all way too long.” Some of them responded: “No, let’s do this by e-mail.” To which we responded: “Alright, so long as you promise to turn in before our deadline, and if you promise to keep your answers super brief – a paragraph at most.”

“No problem,” they said.
Well, the results are in. Or not, really. At the time of writing, the only person who’s answers we have is Einar Skúlason, the chair of the Progressive Party’s municipal team. Dagur B. Eggertsson, chair of Samfylkingin’s, answers just made a *BLINK* sound in our inbox – alas, we are now past our deadline, so we can’t really print them. Our printers get super angry if we are late turning in our issues, so there just needs to be a cut-off point. All of them knew the deadlines they had to work with, and all of them said they would respond in time.

Anyway. Below you may read the answers from good ol’ Einar, and the questions we posed to the rest of them. We will be posting the other parties’ answers on Grapevine.is as soon as they come in (if they come in at all), so keep your eyes glued to that space to read those parties’ missives to y’all.

ONE LAST THING: there are several other parties running in the 2010 Reykjavík municipal elections. Besti flokkurinn (“The Best Party” – www.bestiflokkurinn.is) is fairly well represented in our feature, where we try and squeeze a platform and some sort of policy out of their leader. Frjálslyndi flokkurinn (“The Liberal Party” – www.xf.is) are also running again, and former FF man Ólafur F. Magnússon is running under the moniker Framboð um heiðarleika og almannahagsmuni (“Campaign for honesty and public interest” – they don’t seem to have a website).

Then there is Reykjavíkurframboðið (“The Reykjavík campaign” – www.reykjavikurframbodid.is), which is an independent campaign “for the interests of Reykjavík-dwellers”. The Grapevine loves small, independent parties and campaigns, and we urge you to check out their platforms.

Interview with Einar Skúlason, Progressive Party
Interview with Þorbjörg Helga Vigfúsdóttir, Independence Party
Interview with Dagur B. Eggertsson, Social Democratic Alliance
Unanswered Questions for the Left-Green Party