Wicelandic Post

“Those who lack the skill and talent to get the ball, go for the man”

This quote from an online forum sums up the political debate currently underway in Iceland. People without the required skills and talent to handle the issues at hand compensate by attempting to take the players who do out of the game.

In this particular instance it was Finnbogi Vikar who was being tackled from behind. Finnbog is a member of a parliamentary committee whose mandate is to discuss possible changes to Iceland‘s fishing industry, an industry badly in need of reform. While the other members of said committee are paralyzed in the presence of the powerful fishing lobby, Finnbogi has asked questions that need to be asked and introduced his own ideas which are designed to regain the nation‘s authority over its most precious natural resource.

But Finnbogi would never have been made member of the committee by any of the old four parties, Independence Party, Progressive Party, Social Democrats or Left Greens. Something good had to come out of voting for the Citizen‘s Movement which appointed Finnbogi as their representative on the committee. This was on back of a report which Finnbogi and his schoolmate at Bifrost Law School assembled by themselves and revealed the dire straits an indebted and corrupt fishing industry had found itself in.  It is safe to say that without the questions raised in that report, journalists would not have tracked down the illegal bookkeeping activities of Asbjorn Ottarsson, Independence Party MP and fishing company owner which he admitted on live television last month.

Finnbogi is one of many bright and critically thinking people who have emerged from the underworld of Icelandic discourse since October 2008. Full disclosure, I have known Finnbogi since grade school and he has always been his own man, honest and refreshingly curious. But since he emerged on the national scene he has been under attack. Nameless threats and “good advice” from people who have his “best interests” at heart. The fishing lobby has tried to discredit him in emails and phone calls, as well as shutting him out of the annual fishing industry meeting, when other members of the committee could freely attend.

The most repetitive accusation was that Finnbogi had once ran for the Left Greens in his native hometown of Hveragerdi, which he did some time ago. This was repeated by an Independence Party loon and verbal hitman posing as a journalist at a paper owned by Independence Party insiders. Finnbogi is in fact not involved with the Left Greens, is in the committee on behalf of the Movement and is possibly a registered Independence Party member. He has tried to refrain from political absolutism.

During David Oddson’s heyday as a prime minister the concept of the “blue hand” popped up in Iceland. David who started out as a promising liberal, divided and conqured as he saw fit after more than a decade in the country’s top role. When people disagreed with him they were either called into personal meetings like writer Hallgrimur Helgason experienced, or if institutions were unfavorable then they’d be shut down like the National Economic  Institute which could have come in handy in the last half decade.

When Finnbogi introduced his reform proposals on Silfur Egils last Sunday, the blue hand appeared in blog forums under the name of Fridjon, whose blog “The Blue Oranges” has been a must-read for paranoid right wingers for years. Fridjon wasted no time in discrediting Finnbogi’s credentials as a  “non-political” participant by implying that he was still active within the Left Green party (which he is not), a popular method to scare curious right-wingers away from any topic or person. Shortly thereafter the first commenter had caught the bait, and asked whether Finnbogi was a “commie” after all.

Said Fridjon obviously has no qualms about spreading fear, paranoia and half-truths about those who oppose the unholy marriage between the fishing industry and the political elite. Funnily enough he is a PR-man who has been brought in to wreck havoc on unsuspecting morning radio listeners of Ras 2 on Friday morning as the token “rabid right wing nut” against the token “airy left wing nut” (Listening to such five year old arguments from supposed adults can be enough to ruin your weekends).

Since October 2008, many outstanding, bright and critical persons have emerged from the shadows of the blue hand. The political parties might not have caught onto many of them but they can be found regularly at Silfur Egils, like Marino G. Njalsson whose intelligent fight for the indebted households of Iceland becomes more admirable every day.  For Iceland to rebuild, the doors must be open for people like him and Finnbogi to state their cases, while fear-mongers and party-dogs like Fridjon must be relegated to the rubbish bin with the rest of the rotten fruit. Tackles from behind are supposed to be grounds for dismissal from any game, where thugs are not to be tolerated.

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