Greenland election 2013

[Diouf]

Today the Greenlandic Prime Minister Kuupik Kleist called for a general election on 12 March. Kleist and his party Inuit Ataqatigiit won a big victory in the 2009 elections with 43.7 % of the vote, and he became the first non-Siumut Prime Minister since Greenland was granted home rule in 1979. Apart from classic issues like the economy and social problems, the election is expected to be dominated by discussions about the "big scale law" and the possible extraction and sale of uranium.
The big scale law was adopted by the Greenlandic Landsting a few weeks ago, but it also needs appoval from the Danish Folketing as it concerns the immigration laws. The "big scale law" is intended to make it easier and cheaper for foreign companies to make big, especially mining, projects in Greenland. The most controversial aspect is the fact that it although the law states that companies have to pay their employees the Greenlandic minimum wage, the foreign companies are allowed to withdraw expenses to insurance, travelling, food etc. from that wage, so in the reality the, presumably Chinese, workers will be paid far less than the minimum wage.  

[Filuwaúrdjan]

What sort of outcome is expected?

[Diouf]

The election system is D'Hondt with Greenland as one big constituency with 31 seats.

2009 results

Inuit Ataqatigiit 43,7 % and 14 seats
Siumut 26,5 % and 9 seats
Demokraterne 12,7 % and 4 seats
Atassut 10,9 % and 3 seats
Kattusseqatigiit Partiiat 3,8 % and 1 seat
Sorlaat Partiiat 1,3 % and 0 seats
Others 0,2 % and 0 seats

The 2009 results allowed IA, which is a socialist pro-independence party, to lead a coalition government that also included the social-liberal Demokraterne, who are against further independence due to Greenland's poor economy and often favoured among Danes, and the conservative  Kattusseqatigiit partiiat, who are quite reluctant to support further independence. The coalition has been more stable than many earlier governments, which I reckon will be a positive thing for them in this election.

Siumut is a socialdemocratic pro-independence party which led all governments from the granting of home rule in 1979 until 2009, when it lost the election due to, among other things, an expenses scandal.
Atassut is a liberal party, which does not prefer full independence.
Sorlaat Partiiat has now been closed, while the new party Partii Inuit will run at these elections. PI is created by Nikku Olsen, a defector from IA. Olsen has been criticizing IA heavily; claiming that they have sold out on their values by going into coalition with a capitalistic party, and that their policies have created further social problems and inequality. The party is strongly pro-independent, and has claimed that it will only talk Greenlandic in debates.

[Diouf]

What sort of outcome is expected?

It is expected that the result will be narrower than last time, but the current coalition will probably be able to continue.
IA will almost certainly lose some seats compared to their fantastic result in 2009, but the question is how many. I reckon that the new party Partii Inuit will enter parliament, and they will mainly get their votes from the left wing of the IA.
Siumut is expected to regain some seats despite a few scandals, and it could challenge IA for the role as the biggest party.
Demokraterne and Kattusseqatigiit Partiiat will probably gain a seat or two, which will then supposedly keep the coalition in power.
Atassut will stay broadly the same or make small gains.

[Diouf]

When voting on the "big scale law" the government and Atassut voted in favour, while Siumut abstained. Siumut wanted to postpone the vote as they felt it was being rushed through without thorough preparation, and has claimed that they will improve the law if they win the election. Partii Inuit wants a referendum about the law as the feel that the population should be asked on such an important matter. It does, however, look like they are moderately in favour of the law.

The issue regarding extraction of uranium is much more divisive. The IA has been divided in the question, but on a recent party congress they decided to keep their zero tolerance policy towards uranium extraction. Coalition partners Demokraterne and Kattusseqatigiit Partiiat are in favour of extraction, but in the coalition agreement for 2009-2013 they agreed not to support it. Siumut and Atassut are also in favour of extraction. Partii Inuit proposes a referendum on the subject, and they seem sceptical towards the idea of extraction.

[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.

[Diouf]

The alliances that quite unusally cut across the political spectrum are a fairly recent thing, and mostly has to due with a great deal of enmity between the leaders of Siumut and IA.

Siumut ruled from 1979 to 2009, alternately with support from the right in Atassut or from the left in IA. The most normal construction was Siumut + IA, but the two parties had some huge clashes and coalition breakups, but often ended up getting back together. However, the latest breakup was too damaging. Siumut Prime Minister Hans Enoksen made a broad coalition after the 2005 election with Atassut and IA. But in 2007 Enoksen threw IA out of the government after months of tough words back and forward; politically it was about the IA wanting stricter shrimp quotas but the personal aspect was probably the most important. IA criticized the Siumut corruption and nepotism heavily, especially when it was alleged that Prime Minister Hans Enoksen had favoured his own friends and acquaintances by granting them valuable fish quotas.

So the 2009 election was as much about governance as policy, which led voters away from the establishment party Siumut and Atassut, who had been propping them up even after many of the scandals, and towards IA with the popular Kuupik Kleist.

Also there has been a general shift towards the two big left-wing parties, among other things probably due to the fact that they are the most pro-independent parties. So in this way it's maybe more natural that the the two big parties fight each other for the premiership.

[Diouf]

The biggest Greenlandic newspaper Sermitsiaq has made a Facebook poll, which is the only poll I have seen yet, but it obviously got some huge flaws regarding methodology, but here it is anyway (with 2009 election result in parenthesis):

Siumut 41 % (26.5) 13 seats (9)
Inuit Ataqatigiit 36.6 % (43.7) 12 (13)
Demokraterne 11.1 % (12.7) 3 (4)
Atassut 5.9 % (10.9) 2 (3)
Partii Inuit 4.7 % (new) 1 (new)
Kattusseqatigiit Partiiat 0.7 % (3.8 ) 0 (1)

This gives 15 seats for the current government, 15 seats for the opposition and the new Partii Inuit as the potential kingmaker with one seat. It's difficult to predict who the PI would support, and they have said that they are open for cooperation with everyone. Its founder is a former IA-member and he has been very critical of the IA's right-turn in the last few years. He might agree more with the Siumut regarding the "big scale law" as he wants more profit to go to Greenland. Furthermore, members from different parties have criticized their anti-Danish rhetoric and their wish to make Greenlandic the only language of parliament, so it's possible that PI will be overlooked in coalition talks. Instead one of the small parties from either side could potentially be talked into shifting side.

[Diouf]

The first real opinion poll has now been made by HS Analyse, and it's actually not that different from the Facebook poll.

Inuit Ataqatigiit 43.4 % 13 seats
Siumut 36 % 12 seats
Demokraterne 9.9 % 3 seats
Atassut 5.6 % 2 seats
Partii Inuit 3.2 % 1 seat
Kattusseqatigiit Partiiat 1.2 % 0 seats

This poll gives 16 seats for the current government, who will then just be able to hold onto power. However, Kattusseqatigiit Partiiat, which currently has one seat and is a part of the government, does not look like they will enter parliament. The party has generally relied on the popularity of their leader and current Minister of the Interior Anthon Frederiksen, who was Mayor of Ilulissat until 2008.  In 2009, Kattusseqatigiit Partiiat received 471 (17.6%) votes in Ilulissat; those votes alone made up around half of the total amount of votes they received. So if they fail to regain a seat in parliament as the poll suggests, it will most likely be due to a plummeting support in Ilulissat. Maybe the mayoral effect has disappeared.

[Jens]

Siumut won the election with 42,8 %
IA got 34,4 %
Looks like Greenland gets its first female leader

[Jens]

Here is the full result:

Results Party Name Parliament Election 2013  Parliament Election 2009 Change
A Atassut              2.454   8,1%   (3.094   10,9%) -640      -2,7
D Democrats         1.870   6,2%   (3.620   12,7%) -1.750    -6,5
IA Inuit Ataqatigiit 10.374 34,4%  (12.457 43,7%) -2.083   -9,3
KP Ass. of Cand.    326      1,1%   (1.084   3,8%)   -758      -2,7
PI Partii Inuit         1.930   6,4%   (0          0,0%)  +1.930  +6,4
S Siumut               12.910 42,8% (7.567    26,5%)+5.343  +16,3
 Others                  9         0,0%   (70         0,2%)  -61       -0,2


Source: valg.gl

[Jens]

And mandates:

A Atassut                2 (-1)
D Democrats           2 (-2)
IA Inuit Ataqatigiit  11 (-3)
KP Ass. of Cand.      0 (-1)
PI Partii Inuit           2 (+2)
S Siumut               14 (+5)
 Others                   0

Source: valg.gl

The government coalition (IA, KP & D) lost heavily and KP is out of parliament. Siumut made major gains and is again the largest party in Greenland. The question is who is willing to enter a coalition with Siumut? Extreme leftwing PI (the Greenlandic equivalent to DK Unity List) or Atassut, the old rightwing party (who hasn't won an election in a loooong time)

Mimi Carlsen from IA elected with 113 votes

[minionofmidas]

Who'll be Siumut's coalition partners?

[Jens]

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

[minionofmidas]

Who'll be Siumut's coalition partners?

That is the question...

You edited that in after I posted! Why you sneaky danish bastard...

[minionofmidas]

Also, who is Mimi Carlsen?

[Jens]

Who'll be Siumut's coalition partners?

That is the question...

You edited that in after I posted! Why you sneaky danish bastard...

Well, felt like saying a bit more

[Jens]

Also, who is Mimi Carlsen?

I have no idea, so I googled. Apparently the current Minister for Culture, Education, Research and Church Affairs.

[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.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Interesting result. Any results by locality or the like?

[Jens]

Interesting result. Any results by locality or the like?

Valg.gl has it all. By municipality (kommune), city (by) and voting place (afstemningssted)
Just klik the green "Landstingsvalg 2013 totalt"

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Diolch

[minionofmidas]

Diolch

I believe the phrase you were looking for is "Quyanaq".

[politicus]

Even in Greenland its a bit surprising with only 4 out of 31 seats going to Liberal and Conservative parties (I consider Atassut to be Conservatives). Atassut, once the second largest party in Greenland, looks doomed.
I wonder at what point we will see a viable Centre-Right alternative to IA and Siumut. Of course it depends on the countrys economic progress, but what is your guess? Maybe 15-20 years?

[ottermax]

Even in Greenland its a bit surprising with only 4 out of 31 seats going to Liberal and Conservative parties (I consider Atassut to be Conservatives). Atassut, once the second largest party in Greenland, looks doomed.
I wonder at what point we will see a viable Centre-Right alternative to IA and Siumut. Of course it depends on the countrys economic progress, but what is your guess? Maybe 15-20 years?

You could argue that the opening of Greenland to development by both IA and Siumut is a fairly right-wing move despite their left-wing platforms. That was the main issue in the election, and what actually surprises me is the lack of a left-wing anti-development party.