Jens Stoltenberg: re-elected with narrow majority
Posted on 09/15/2009 10:54:12 PM PDT by bruinbirdman
Jens Stoltenberg on Tuesday vowed to strengthen Norway’s welfare system and defend jobs after winning re-election as prime minister of western Europe’s biggest oil producing state.
His centre-left coalition clinched a narrow majority in Monday’s poll after seeing off a stiff challenge from opposition parties promising lower taxes and greater free enterprise.
Jens Stoltenberg: re-elected with narrow majority
The result was a vote of confidence in Norway’s cradle-to-grave welfare system and an endorsement of Mr Stoltenberg’s efforts to insulate the country from the global downturn.
But two of the biggest long-term dilemmas facing Norway were left unresolved: whether it should join the European Union and whether it should open pristine Arctic coastline to oil drilling.
Mr Stoltenberg’s Labour party is generally pro-EU and sympathetic to oil exploration but it has been paralysed on both issues by opposition from junior coalition partners.
Jonas Gahr Store, foreign minister, said there was unlikely to be a “big push” to revive debate over EU membership, noting that opinion polls showed a majority of Norwegians still opposed to accession 15 years after they voted No in a referendum.
He said the government would continue studying the costs and benefits of drilling in the Lofoten region, which the energy industry believes contains up to 2bn barrels of oil, but said there would be no rush to reach a decision.
“Norway has always moved gradually all along the coast,” he told the Financial Times.
The government is under pressure from the energy industry and labour unions to open new areas to exploration as North Sea reserves dwindle. Yet, it made protecting the environment and fighting climate change a mainstay of its campaign.
Many in the oil industry had hoped for a change of government because both main opposition parties support drilling in Lofoten. But the Norwegian Oil Industry Association was encouraged by the results, pointing out that parties on both sides that support exploration increased their share of the vote at the expense of those opposed to more drilling.
Opponents of opening Lofoten insisted they would not be steamrollered. “It’s red-green politics that the voters have asked us to continue,” said Kristin Halvorsen, finance minister and leader of the Socialist Left party. “We haven’t chosen the environment as our main cause for tactical reasons. We’ve done so because it’s the most important cause for the future.”
Both main right-of-centre opposition parties gained ground in Monday’s election but the ruling coalition clung on to an 86-83 majority, one down from four years ago.
The result marked the first time in 16 years that a Norwegian government has won re-election.
Ever notice how, as countries go from democracy to socialism/communism, we go from creating jobs to “defending jobs” or “saving jobs”? “Ain’t that Weird?” - Brother Dave
Ah crap the reds won in Norway again.
Will he let more muslims and other third worlders flood in?
We’re going to “defend jobs” by raising taxes and increasing welfare allotments. They’re going to be losing jobs sounds like.
Norway is racist!! They have no black people!!
To buying votes with socialist redistributions of wealth!
yitbos, bro
Of course we can't have that... it's Norway, silly! Lower taxes? Greater free enterprise? Oh, peshaw!
Which means that a significant number of hard-working people in Norway are again at the mercy of those who want to take what they earn to fund themselves. That's how socialism works, which is why the most dangerous thing we can do as a country is to let our demographics continue to shift to include more takers and less producers.
Ever notice that the only seemingly successful socialist country around needs vast oil wealth and more drilling to support its population of 4.5 million — and even then, it requires HUGE taxes on the most successful capitalists to support the transfer of wealth.
Socialism: trickle-up poverty.
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