Norway’s Progress Party wins 20% of the vote

The Norwegian electorate has turned its back on Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik’s Christian Democrats and their main Conservative allies, electing a Red-Green alliance to office and making the “far right” Progress Party the largest party of opposition.

If a parliament dominated by Reds and Greens and the far right sounds pretty wacky you could be right. But in Norway, apparently, life has the odd political idiosyncrasy. For one, they get away with some amazing election material:-

“Dangerous Africans walk the streets,” read one campaign slogan on the party’s website, while a poster showed a masked man aiming a shotgun at the reader. “This man is of foreign origin,” the caption said.

The Progress Party also has some very wacky policies for a supposed party of the right:-

… the Progress Party succeeded with a campaign that mixed blaming immigrants for rising crime with calls for tax cuts on alcohol and Mediterranean retirement homes for Norway’s elderly.

Yes, well, we would all like a small retirement apartment in St.Trop. But there are an awful lot of North Africans mooching around southern France, you know. Not sure where the benefit lies.

But maybe Jean-Marie could offer French voters a reciprocatory ski deal in the Frozen North, which would at least make the whole thing a cost-free exchange. That’s “progress”, surely. Unless French pensioners also wear masks and carry shotguns.

Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, September 13, 2005 at 11:19 PM in European Nationalism
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They’re probably thinking about Spain rather than France—there are ~ 20,000 Norwegian citizens living in Spain. And, the leader of Norway’s Progress Party has a house there—he and his wife spend a lot of time there and are, apparently, planning to spend the winters there when he retires.

http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article820234.ece

Posted by jun on Saturday, September 17, 2005 at 12:57 AM | #

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