Fifteen MPs from the Social Democrats and Leftist-Greens have submitted a parliamentary resolution calling for an investigation into the privatization of Iceland’s banks. In related news, a third of conservative voters favor seeing former ministers – even from their own party – standing trial for negligence.
Iceland’s banks were publicly owned until the 1990s, when a process of privatization by the conservative-led government eventually fully privatized all of Iceland’s banks by 2003. Since then, Iceland’s government was decidedly hands-off about supervising and regulating the banks’ activities, with results that are well known today.
“The goal of an investigation of this sort,” the resolution reads in part, “is to shine a light on operations pertaining to the sale of Landsbanki and Bunaðarbanki in 2002 so that it becomes clear where in the government, when and why one of the most important decisions of this process was taken. Only in this way can we draw real lessons from this controversial sale and build the laws and rules regarding the privatization of government institutions upon this lesson.”
In related news, a new Capacent poll shows that one third of conservative voters favor the Reykjavík Four (as we’ll be calling them from now on) standing trial for negligence. The majority of voters from every other party favor the same measure, with Leftist-Green voters showing the greatest support for the measure overall.
Votes on both measures are expected this week.