In Time With Protests, Petition Calls For President To Dissolve Government

A new petition implores President Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson to dissolve the ruling coalition, gaining more signatures in the wake of yesterday’s protests.

The petition has received over 2,500 signatures at the time of this writing, less than 48 hours after it was created. The mission statement of the petition argues that the current ruling coalition – comprised of the Progressives and the Independence Party – are deeply mistrusted by the general public, as recent polls have shown.

The undersigned therefore call upon the president to exercise the power granted him in Article 24 of the Icelandic constitution – specifically, to dissolve the coalition, institute a national government (i.e., power sharing between all parties with no ruling coalition nor opposition), and to put the draft for the new constitution up for referendum.

The petition began the day before protests were held in front of parliament yesterday calling for the resignation of the government. How many people were in attendance is disputed – while Vísir contends there were about 300 protestors, and RÚV reports several hundred, former journalist and writer Lára Hanna Einarsdóttir reports about 5,000 were in attendance, pointing out that some news services greatly under-reported attendance of the 2008-2009 protests at first as well. Lára provided video evidence to support her claim of yesterday’s attendance, as can be seen below.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAYKoXX4bQc&w=560&h=315]