Faroese parliamentary election 2022

[nelson]

The Faroese centre-right coalition has broken down and Premier Bárður á Steig Nielsen from the liberal Union Party has called an election for the 33 member Løgting to be held Thursday the 8th of December.

The government lost its narrow majority after the small SoCon Centre Party left the government following the firing of their leader Jenis av Rana as Minister of Education and Foreign Affairs because he refused to implement a law that gives same-sex spouses more rights in relation to children they are co-parents off. 

The left nationalist opposition party Republic had already tabled a MoNC against Jenis av Rana because he said during the recent Folketing campaign that he could never accept Conservative leader Søren Pape Poulsen as Danish Prime Minister because he is gay, but that motion wasn't voted on before the Løgting was dissolved. 

...

The Faroese party system is structured along two axis (separatist vs. unionist and the usual socioeconomic one), but a third between the parties wanting to liberalise the fishing quota system and agricultural sector vs. "protectionist" unites the liberal Progress with the two left/centre-left parties on the free market side (although there are some opponents of full liberalisation of the quota system within the Equality Party) and the rest of the right in favour of a more protectionist approach favouring vested interests within the two sectors.

There are seven parties, one broad tent left unionist (the Equality Party aka the Social Democrats), one left and fairly broad separatist (Republic), and one broad tent unionist centre-right (the Union Party), and four separatist centre-right to right parties. The reason the separatist right is so divided is that it includes most of country's fishing community (anti-tax and anti-big government) and evangelical fundamentalists which creates internal divisions. The original separatist party Self-Government from 1906 is today a small moderate party with residual support in certain local communities especially in the north (while its social liberal Tórshavn wing has largely defected to the Equality Party) and has been replaced by the conservative (both economically and socially) People's Party - founded in 1939/40 to oppose a radical land reform proposed by the Self-Government Party - as the big separatist party on the right. Progress is a new-ish economically and socially liberal party founded in opposition to the SoCon and protectionist tendencies dominating the separatist right. The Centre Party is the party of the evangelical fundamentalists which originally tried to place itself close to the centre (slightly centre-right) on the socioeconomic axis in order to be able to work with both sides but with the left increasingly becoming socially liberal over the past 15-20 years it can now only realistically work with the right and has moved a bit further right on economics. 

The outgoing government was a protectionist centre-right/right coalition of the Union Party, People's Party and Centre Party.

[Devil Wincarnate]

The Faroese parliament is the only legislature where I've stuck my head through an open window to have a look.

[Chris from Brum]

Nov 9, 2022 19:22:05 GMT nelson said:

The Faroese party system is structured along two axis (separatist vs. unionist and the usual socioeconomic one), but a third between the parties wanting to liberalise the fishing quota system and agricultural sector vs. "protectionist" unites the liberal Progress with the two left/centre-left parties on the free market side (although there are some opponents of full liberalisation of the quota system within the Equality Party) and the rest of the right in favour of a more protectionist approach favouring vested interests within the two sectors.

There are seven parties, one broad tent left unionist (Javnaðarflokkurin; the Equality Party aka the Social Democrats), one left and fairly broad separatist (Tjóðveldi; Republic), and one broad tent unionist centre-right (Sambandsflokkurin; the Union Party), and four separatist centre-right to right parties. The reason the separatist right is so divided is that it includes most of country's fishing community (anti-tax and anti-big government) and evangelical fundamentalists which creates internal divisions. The original separatist party Self-Government (Sjálvstýrisflokkurin)from 1906 is today a small moderate party with residual support in certain local communities especially in the north (while its social liberal Tórshavn wing has largely defected to the Equality Party) and has been replaced by the conservative (both economically and socially) People's Party (Fólkaflokkurin) - founded in 1939/40 to oppose a radical land reform proposed by the Self-Government Party - as the big separatist party on the right. Progress (Framsókn) is a new-ish economically and socially liberal party founded in opposition to the SoCon and protectionist tendencies dominating the separatist right. The Centre Party (Miðflokkurin) is the party of the evangelical fundamentalists which originally tried to place itself close to the centre (slightly centre-right) on the socioeconomic axis in order to be able to work with both sides but with the left increasingly becoming socially liberal over the past 15-20 years it can now only realistically work with the right and has moved a bit further right on economics. 

The outgoing government was a protectionist centre-right/right coalition of the Union Party, People's Party and Centre Party.

The parties' local names and colours added to the above.

The Faroe Islands also send 2 members to the Danish Folketing; these are currently one each from Union and Social Democrats.  Union affiliates with Venstre while the Social Democrats, unsurprisingly, affiliate with the national Social Democrats.

[nelson]

Nov 10, 2022 16:14:50 GMT Chris from Brum said:

The parties' local names and colours added to the above.

Self-Government's modern Faroese name is Sjálvstýri without the flokkurin (party), they briefly used New Self-Government (Nýtt Sjalvstýri) in an attempt to rebrand after nearly being wiped out but then dropped the New. The Republican Party (Tjóðveldisflokkurin) shortened their name to Republic (Tjóðveldi) in 2007 and that started a trend with ditching party (flokkurin) from party names, Progress was founded in 2011 without bothering with the flokkurin and then the historial Sjálvstýrisflokkurin (the oldest party in the country) followed in 2015 when they ditched party and became "new" (before realising no one bought that). Three of the four other party names don't really work without flokkurin and Samband (Union/Connection) would be too radical for the second oldest party in the country (founded 1909) that unlike their historic rivals in the Self-Government (Party) is still one of the major players in Faroese politics.

I covered the Faroese Folketing election in the Danish election thread, but the voting patterns are different and the turnout is much lower so it's not really relevant for the Løgting election, which is very much the main event in Faroese politics due to their extensive autonomy.

[nelson]

People's Party leader Christian Andreasen steps down as chairman and won't run in the election saying he doesn't have the necessary broad support in the parliamentary group to make the "clear changes" he considers necessary for the party. He partly blames "positions taken against my advice" for their loss in the Folketing election (seems to be mainly the campaign against the Russia sanctions).

Going into the campaign with an interim leader obviously isn't optimal for the party. 

[nelson]

Read a bit more about the crisis in the People's Party and the decision Christian Andreasen referred to was the composition of the party list.

Christian Andreasen replaced long time, but never especially popular, party leader Jørgen Niclasen earlier this year when Niclasen got caught drunk driving. Against his wishes a majority in the leadership decided that only MPs in the Løgting and Ministers could run for the Folketing election which led to an all-male party list and lots of negative press, which Andreasen says was a major reason they lost so big. The purpose of this decision was to keep the Mayor of Tórshavn Annika Olsen off the list. Olsen has long been a controversial person in the party, she challenged Niclasen for the leadership in 2011 but narrowly lost after a bizarre coup where her father was ousted as leader of a local party chapter on the southernmost island Suduroy while being on the 2 hour ferry journey back home from the capital (island politics at its finest..). In the 2015 election Olsen got by far the most votes, more than three times as many as Niclasen, which led to a power struggle and her briefly joining Progress but returning after a very nasty and hate-filled campaign against her and her family, she then went on leave but made a comeback as mayor of the capital in 2017, at the root of the conflict is that Olsen and the Tórshavn wing is much more socially liberal and less keen on protecting fishing quota privileges than the rest of the party. If Olsen had stayed in Progress and her supporters had joined her it's quite possible Progress could have overtaken the People's Party and become the main party on the separatist right, she was one of the islands' most popular politicians at the time. 

A year ago Olsen voted with the opposition to give more rights to gay co-parents (the law that led to Jenis av Rana being ousted because he refused to implement follow-up provisions). Two ministers subsequently stepped out of the cabinet and returned to the Løgting to make sure Olsen left parliament where she was an alternate.

They'll hold a crisis meeting later today to asses the situation. 

[nelson]

Nov 11, 2022 10:08:18 GMT nelson said:

They'll hold a crisis meeting later today to asses the situation. 

The 25 year old Beinir Jo­hann­e­sen has been elected new chairman. He has only been in the Løgting since 2019 when he got the most personal votes after having been councillor in Klaksvík (located up north and the only town other than Tórshavn). 

Jo­hann­e­sen is from a prominent Social Democratic family, his uncle is the former Premier Aksel V. Johannesen (2015-19) and his paternal grandfather edited the party paper Sosialurin and was an MP 1980-2008 and in the cabinet 1979-81 and1985–1989. It's rather unusual to move to the other side of both the socioeconomic and separatist vs. unionist side in Faroese political families. 

He's clearly a big talent, but still seems a bit desperate to pick someone that young, but I guess after Anna Falkenberg got so many votes in the Folketing election they think it's worth a shot and it's a way to avoid choosing between old rivals from the previous generations. 

[Chris from Brum]

Logting, not Althing.

[nelson]

Nov 11, 2022 20:46:44 GMT Chris from Brum said:

Logting, not Althing.

Løgting actually. 

The new chairman says the parliamentary group has agreed that the representatives of the People's Party should be able to vote according to their own convictions in ethical matters, and that Annika Olsen can run for the party if she chooses to. Which seems to be the sort of "agreement" that has included twisting the arms of some of the SoCons. 

[nelson]

We got the first poll from spyr.fo (the only Faroese pollster). Changes from the previous election is parenthesis. Like the Folketing election the two unionist parties are doing well, but the EP has dropped from 30% they got in the August poll, while the Union Party has gained a couple of points (they may be rewarded for standing up to the Centre Party, which most of their voters consider to be bigots). The editor of the pro-Union Party media that has published the poll suggest a broad coalition between the two unionist parties to break with the "bloc politics" of the previous term, so maybe both Denmark and the Faroe Islands get broad SocDem/Lib coalitions, but they're a seat short in this poll so would have to include Progress. The 2015-19 coalition between EP, Republic and Progress also has a majority, but it got stuck on fishing quota reform and that issue has since been "solved" with a far less marked based reform so that's likely not a realistic option. 

Compared to the August poll where the opposition would have got 20 of 33 seats this is much closer with 16 seats to the governing parties, but since the Union Party can't accept Centre leader Jenis av Rana in the government that's not an option. The People's Party doesn't drop from their August level, but that was already quite low. Their two competitors on the separatist right likely gain most of the votes lost to People's and are both well above their 2019 results. Progress drops nearly a point from August while Centre gains 1.5 and would gain a third seat. Self-Government looks set to finally drop out of the Løgting after 116 years. 

Equality Party 27.3 (+5.1)
Union Party 20.7 (+0.4)
Republic 19.0 (+0.9)
People's Party 16.4 (-8.1)

Centre 8.0 (+2.6)
Progress 7.0 (+2.4)

Self-Government 1.6 (-1.8)


Seats:

EP 9 (+2)
Republic 6 (nc)

Self-Government 0 (-1)
Progress 2 (nc)

Centre 3 (+1)
UP 7 (nc)
PP 6 (-2)

[nelson]

More trouble for the People's Party. Minister of Social Affairs Sólvit E. Nolsø (37) steps down as minister and leaves the party to join Progress, which has accepted him as parliamentary candidate. He's a former tv-journalist and from the island of Sandoy (pop. 1,200) just south of the two main islands where he has a personal vote. 

...

Former Minister of the Interior and ex-Mayor of Sunda (2005–2008 og 2013–20) Heðin S. Zachariasen (63) is not running for reelection. But hasn't defected (yet?). Media reports that there is widespread dissatisfaction within the party across the entire central part of the islands (which is where most of the population live), the far south and far north are SoCon heartland. 

Sunda (the Sounds) municipality stretches across the sound separating the northern part of the two main islands. Zachariasen was also mayor of a smaller village municipality 1993-2004 before it merged into Sunda.

[nelson]

I'm probably going to mention the islands and municipalities a lot, so here's a map. There are still 29 municipalities (30 on the map, but Húsar has since merged into Klaksvík) despite the islands only having 50k inhabitants because they (like Iceland) want all mergers to be voluntary. But in 2015 they reorganized elderly care into 8 regions and they'll likely end up forming the basis for a new municipal structure, but the process is moving at a snail's pace.

[Chris from Brum]

Our family friends live on Nólsoy, across the fjord from Tórshavn. It used to be a separate municipality but is now part of Tórshavn.

[nelson]

New poll from spyr.fo today.

The People's Party has lost 3.8 point from the poll conducted at the start of the campaign and is down to 12.6, while Progress gain 2.3 points and are at 9.3%. Self-Government gains half a point and Centre remain on the same level. The Union Party drops 2.7 point to 18.0, Republic gains 2.5 points and the Equality Party gain a point to 28.3%. The poll has a left/centre-left majority with 17 seats to EP and Republic. This poll is nearly as left wing as their August poll.

Will be interesting to see if the People's Party drops even further and whether Progress manage to surpass them, if so their collapse might even save Self-Government (allowing yet another historically important but nowadays utterly pointless party to survive a bit longer).
 

Changes from the 2019 election is parenthesis.

Equality Party 28.3 (+6.1)
Republic 21.5 (+3.4)
Union Party 18.0 (-2.3)

People's Party 12.6 (-8.1)

Progress 9.3 (+4.7)
Centre 8.2 (+2.8)

Self-Government 2.1 (-1.3)


Seats:

EP 10 (+3)
Republic 7 (+1)

Self-Government 0 (-1)
Progress 3 (+1)

Centre 3 (+1)
UP 6 (-1)
PP 4 (-3)

[nelson]

Annika Olsen has just been selected as a candidate for Republic by their chapter in Suðurstreymoy (Southern Stremoy) saying the party represents idealism, equality and the will of the people, and is striving for Faroese self-sufficiency which is the most important national goal. A move that makes this election even more unpredictable and volatile than it already is because it's very difficult to asses how much of her personal vote and how many of her supporters will agree to move that far on the socioeconomic axis. It's clear there'll be some kind of realignment on the separatist side along SocLib vs SoCon lines but how much and how it's going to look in the end is hard to predict.   

Her coalition in the City Council in Tórshavn is with Progress and Republic, and her parents where originally in Republic (before their investment in trawler fishing made them wealthy and they decided they didn't like paying high taxes and moved right on economics..) and she still has family members in the party, so she has good connections with them. But no idea why she hasn't chosen Progress, which would seem like a much more logical choice and (as mentioned earlier) at one point briefly joined. 

This isn't quite as crazy as if a continental centre-right politician joined some left wing party since Republic is a left nationalist party with emphasis on nationalism that right from it was founded in 1948 has included some businesspeople, but it's still a big leap. 

[nelson]

The entire board in the People's Party in Tórshavn has left the party as has the chairman of their youth org HUXA (a strange acronym standing for "Right-wing Youth X on A", their party letter), a new board has been elected and the first candidate selection meeting is on Thursday. Saw an opinion piece saying the change to the electoral law in 2007 making the entire country one constituency (it used to have seven small ones with the far south and far north being overrepresented) has led to increasing centre/periphery polarization and pointing out Republic has become a Tórshavn and southern Streymoy dominated party and Progress was founded as one while Self-Government and now also the People's Party have become "periphery parties". That of course leaves the two unionist parties as the much more geographically balanced parties. Annika Olsen is running on "a better deal" for Tórshavn in nationalpolitics which he of course sees as "pouring petrol on the fire". 

Some candidates from Self-Government seemingly running on opposition to discrimination of anti-vaxers (not sure if that's party policy, but it seems so). A bit sad if that's their final attempt at relevance. Their economic platform is by now quite right wing, it used to be a centrist party. 

[nelson]

Beinta Løwe from Republic's left wing has declined to run for reelection in protest against the party accepting Annika Olsen as a candidate. She's so far the only one and the internal critics seem to be keeping a fairly low profile. But it still might cost them some votes to EP (even if it'll no doubt result in a net gain). Hard to claim you're the most left wing party when you run one of the country's most prominent centre-right politicians on your list.

[nelson]

All parties except Self-Government and Centre have agreed to prolong a fishing agreement with Russia where Faroese fishermen get access to cod and haddock quotas in the Barents Sea in return for Russian fishing companies getting access to fish and reload other species in Faroese waters. The centre-left opposition had criticized the government on this, but since it would cost jobs not to renew the agreement (which has existed since 1977, originally of course made with the Soviet Union) they've made a U-turn, experts say it could have been cancelled without significant consequences if adjustments in the fishing industry had been made in time, so I suppose the opposition will still criticize the government for leaving them no choice but renew the deal. 

[nelson]

A new Spyr.fo surprisingly has the People's Party out of the woods and back on a "normal" level. It has been reported they won a tv-debate, but otherwise I'm not sure how they managed to turn things around. It is the best Republic poll in a long time, but not quite as good as one would expect after Annika Olsen joined them. 

People's Party 19.2 (7)
Union Party 18.9 (6)

Equality Party 25.4 (9)
Republic 20.7 (7)

Centre 6.8 (2)
Progress 6.6 (2)

Self-Government 2.5 (0)

The two main government alternatives:

Centre-left:
EP + Republic = 16

Broad centre:
EP + UP + Progress = 17

[nelson]

The respondents were also asked which parties they wanted their party to go into coalition with and 3/4 of Union Party voters have the SocDems in EP as their preferred coalition partner, while only 21% want to continue with the People's Party. 

Top 3 of preferred coalition partner for supporters of each party with least popular in parenthesis.

Union Party

Equality Party 74%
Progress 24%
People's 21%

(Republic 2%)

Equality Party

Union Party 63%
Republic 39%
Progress 36%

(Centre 1%)

People's Party

Union Party 76%
Centre 31%
Progress 31%

(Republic 8%)


Republic

Equality Party 82%
Progress 60%
Self-Government 18%

(Centre 0%)


Progress

Equality Party 61%
Union Party 47%
Republic 42%

(Centre 0%)


Centre

People's Party 53%
Union Party 49%
Equality Party 14%

(Republic 6%)


Self-Government

People's Party 43%
Equality Party 38%
Union Party 35%
Republic 33%

(Progress/Centre 14%)