Greenland election 2013

[ingemann]

To create some historical and political background here's some context.

Greenland was colonised by Danish clergy in 1721, missions by Hussite (Bohemian Lutherans) under Danish suzerain followed. In this periode Greenlandish was taught in the schools and used in churches, Danish was only spoken by a Danish administrators and the local elite (a mix of Danes born on Greenland, mixed and assimilated Inuits). The elite is usual recognisable by haviing German names or Danish ones which doesn't end in "-sen". Most of the nomadic population was settled in hamlets in this periode
In 1953 Greenland was changed from a colony to a Danish county. After which Denmark began a modernisation campaign, where many people was moved from the rural hamlets to bigger urban centres as industrial workers, this is a major trauma in Greenlandic politics as the moving was only semi-voluntary. Another part of the modernisation program was a danisfication process pushed through to large extent by the local elite, where the Danish language was taugth in schools instead of Greenlandic.
In 1979 Greenland became a autonome country, what followed was a inuitisation, where Greenlandic replaced Danish in schools, reaching it highest in 1994 where Danish speaking classes was dropped in all schools outside the capital Nuuk, and Danish was reduced to 1st foreign language. It would likely also have been dropped in Nuuk too if not for the fear that Danish speaking specialists wouldn't move to Greenland if their children couldn't be educated in Danish. Of course to large extent this was a excuse, many of the Greenlandic elite including people supporting the inuitisation taught their children primary Danish.
In 2009 Grenland got full autonomy through not independence.

Demography: Official 85% of the population are Inuits, and there isn't made statistic on home language. Unofficial it's a little difference. Around 35% are monolingual Greenlandic speakers, 35% speak other languages (mainly Danish). 15% of the population are billingual Danish/Greenlandic speakers, 5% are mainly Danish speaker but understand Grenlandish, while 10% are Danish speaker who don't speak Greenlandic (through the usual speak other languages; English, German and French). The last 10% are usual Danish immigrants and expats. Half of the latter group live in Nuuk where they make up 25% of the population. But with the native Danish speakers and the billinguals Nuuk have a bigger Danish speaking population.
As there is some social pressure in speaking Greenlandic many of the billingual Greenlander are likely mainly Danish speaker, but who report themselves as bilinguals.
Greenlandic is split in 3 major dialects, East Greenlandic spoken by 10% which isn't mutual intelligible with the other dialects. Northwest Greenlandic by 2-3% which is mutual intelligible with West Greenlandic and  West Greenlandic which is the official dialect.
Children born from mixed relationsship are usual raised as Danish speakers.

Language and class

Greenland is a very small country in population with only 56 000 people, this give some problems in business and education. As the big size of the country need a bigger number of public workers per capita than smaller countries. This together with the low population mean that public workers need to be imported from Denmark and that some jobs like teachers in Greenlandic classes are to like extent taught by non-teachers, resulting in a relative low quality education in many Greenladic schools outside the major towns. As result many business are run by Danish speakers, who both get a better education and more specialists are imported from Denmark. Also if a Greenlander want a higher education, they to large extent need to get in Denmark (as Greenland don't have the benefit of scale).

The result is that monolingual Greenlander usual have short education, low paying job or are unemployed.
Greenlanders who speak Danish are better off but in general not much. They tend to be more urban and better educated, but they still tend to work in unskilled jobs.
Danish speakers with no Greenlandic skill on the other hand sit in the top as leader of the big corporation or in the administration, or as midlevel specialised as nurses, doctors and other public jobs. Danish speakers with Greenlandic skills are often small business owners.
Bilinguals are the social, political and artistic elite.

As such it's no surprise that the socialist parties do well in Greenland and that there is some ethnic split in vote. Through less than people would think at first. Danes and Danish speakers usual vote for Demokraterne and IA, through Atassut get support among the older Danes.

[ingemann]

Who'll be Siumut's coalition partners?

That is the question...
Siumut is having meetings with the other parties. My (completly unqualified) guess is Attassut. I don't think Siumut can meet PI's demands, and I don't think that Ia wants to be a part of a Siumut-led coalition. Don't know about The Danish Party Democrats

Demokraterne are unlikely to join a coalition with them, as they said they won't join a coalition with Siumut. But on the other hand if Siumut coalition with PI are the alternative, they would do so.

Beside it's not fair to call Demokraterne the Danish party, a majority of Danes on Greenland votes for other parties. In fact most Danish immigrants and expats vote for other parties. The Danish speakers who make up the base of the party are born on Greenland.

[ingemann]

Ideologically this is a left-center-right coalition, just like the former government. The only difference is that the more centrist party is the biggest this time, but since Kleist made IA pretty centrist, thats not much of a difference. I am not sure this "unnaturally" broad coalition thing is healthy for Greenland. It tends to blur things too much.

With perhaps 25% primarily Danish speaking people in Greenland (as Ingemann pointed out, many Inuit Danish speakers say they are bilingual because it is more "appropriate") the language thing is bad news. Its not very democratic to ignore such a large minority. Hammond seems to be as nationalist as Hans Enoksen on this one. I am surprised Atassut has accepted that. But they are probably worried they will become completely irrelevant if they stay out of the new government.

Uranium extraction is problematic as well, but to be expected.

I find it a interesting experiment, through quite foolish. The new government will likely see a backlash if they really try to push it, and while not a losing issue at it own, it can mean that the Danish speakers decides to back the opposition enmass, and with Danish speakers spread out in both blocks right now, it would be a disaster for the Siumut and Atassut (mostly for Atassut as it's already a moribond party).