Photo – NRK

Exit polls suggest Norway’s center-right coalition government is ahead, although the election appears too close to call.

The poll for the public broadcaster NRK projects the center-right coalition could finish the night with 88 seats, leaving the center-left opposition with 81. The balance will be tilted by two center parties that expect to get 4% each and emerge as king makers.

If poll projections are confirmed, this will be the first time a right-wing administration gains re-election.

Today, Norwegians will go to the polls for their country’s parliamentary elections. While the next prime minister will undoubtedly hail from either the centre-left Labour Party or the incumbent centre-right Conservative Party, the governing coalition will be decided by minor parties’ allegiances. 

In particular, the populist Centre Party (SP), which is polling at highs of around  10%,  could play kingmaker for either coalition. The outsider party opposes left and right wing politics, campaigning on the rejection of governmental centralisation and free trade. Highly Eurosceptic and Islamophobic, it opposes the open practice of Islam and Norway’s participation in both the European Economic Area and the Schengen Area.

Labour’s concerns about capitalism and free trade’s effects on the working class make it the more likely partner for the agrarian SP. Expect the SP to join with Labour to pursue issues that appeal to their pastoral constituents, such as preventing rural hospital closures and the consolidation of small municipalities.

Still, the outcome is too close to call; most polls suggest a victory for either coalition by one or two seats out of the parliament’s 169, making this the closest race in recent history.

What’s the story?

Norway goes to the polls on 11 September to decide whether the outgoing Conservative prime minister, Erna Solberg, or her Labour rival, Jonas Gahr Støre, will lead the country for the next four years.

The contest looks too close to call, with Solberg’s rightwing bloc of parties and Støre’s leftwing opposition grouping neck-and-neck. The scores of a half-dozen smaller parties that could end up as kingmakers will be critical.

How does the system work?

The country of 5.2 million people uses a modified proportional representation system in which 150 MPs in the 169-seat storting, or parliament, are directly elected by constituencies.

The remaining 19 so-called “levelling” seats – one for each of Norway’s counties – are distributed proportionately to parties that clear a 4% vote threshold so their final seat tally fairly reflects their share of the national vote.

What happened last time?

The economically liberal, centre-right Conservatives with their 48 MPs have governed since the 2013 election in a minority coalition with the populist, anti-immigrant Progress party (29), backed in parliament on a confidence and supply basis by the socially conservative Christian Democrats (10)and centrist Liberals (nine).

In opposition are the social democrats of Labour (55), which finished as largest party four years ago but was unable to form a ruling coalition, the agrarian Centre party (10), the Socialist Left (seven) and the Greens (one), who made their debut in the storting.

Where are we now?

On the right, promising stability plus further tax cuts and helped by an economy recovering nicely from the 2014 oil price collapse that hit Norway hard, Solberg’s Conservatives are polling at between 24 and 25%.

Their Progress party partners are on 15 to 16%, their core support reinforced by the 2015 migrant crisis and the withdrawals the government made from Norway’s near trillion-dollar sovereign wealth fund during the economic downturn. The Christian Democrats are on five to 6% and the Liberals on four to 5%.

On the left, economic growth and falling unemployment have undermined Labour’s key call for greater equality and seen its support fall 37% in January to between 26 and 27% now. Its potential allies are faring better. The Centre party is on nine to 11%, the Socialist Left on 6% and the fast-growing Greens on four to 5%.

The stage is set for a nail-biter, and negotiations to form a government with reliable support in parliament could prove equally fraught.

Norwegian Labor Party leader Jonas Gahr Støre reached out to voters with a brutally honest pledge — he’s going to raise their taxes if elected prime minister next week.

A year ago, Norway’s general election on September 11 looked like a certain victory for Støre’s Labor-led center-left bloc over Conservative Prime Minister Erna Solberg’s center-right coalition government. Now they are neck-and-neck in the polls.

Solberg’s Conservative Party has attacked Labor’s platform by suggesting the party will raise taxes by more than it says if it gets into power, or will be forced to do so by its leftist allies in a governing coalition. But the Norwegian left says there is no option but to raise taxes because of the way the Conservatives have been spending money and giving tax breaks to the rich.

“Do you know how much money they have spent? It’s a piñata,” said Bjørn Jacobsen, who is running for parliament for the Socialist Left Party (SV) in the county of Møre og Romsdal. His party is a likely junior coalition partner if Labor gets into power.

Jacobsen shares the widespread feeling in Norway that it will be a very close contest on Monday, though he expects the outcome to be a coalition of Labor, the rural Center Party and the Socialist Left.

Bernt Aardal, a political scientist at the University of Oslo, predicts it will be “very close, both in terms of the election result and what is going to happen with the government afterwards.” The uncertainty stems partly from weak support for many smaller parties, some of which could fail to reach the 4 percent election threshold, and from shifts in strength between parties in opposing blocs.

Though it’s a safe bet that either Støre or Solberg will be prime minster, the daily Aftenposten recently listed 10 different possible government coalition constellations. A weak result for Labor could force Støre to rely heavily on the small Green and/or Red parties for support, which could make governing difficult and hand the tiny parties considerable power.

Welfare costs money

Egalitarian Norway already has steeply progressive income-tax rates, with a top marginal rate of 46.7 percent, and a total tax burden of around 45 percent, which is above the OECD average.

“Tax is not so important as what we shall do with it — we want to have as low taxes as possible, but as high as necessary,” Støre said in an interview on national broadcaster NRK, reconfirming his pledge to raise the total tax take by up to 15 billion Norwegian kroner ($1.93 billion).

He said Norway needs that money to invest in teachers, to deal with an aging population and to boost job training.

“We kept our tax promise in 2005, 2009, 2013, and we will keep it in 2017,” Støre said.

Though voters are showing signs of fatigue with Solberg’s minority coalition of her Conservatives and the populist Progress Party, the disillusionment does not seem as rampant as when voters in 2013 ousted the previous Labor-led coalition, which had governed for eight years under Støre’s predecessor, Jens Stoltenberg.

Stoltenberg’s approach, when he won power in 2005 for a second time, had been to tell the people not to expect tax cuts; Støre has gone one better and chosen to campaign on a promise to raise taxes.

For the social democratic Labor Party, which is the biggest party with 55 seats in the 169-seat parliament, that means rolling back tax cuts granted by the Solberg government to high earners and the rich. But in a country where income differences are smaller than in many others, the planned tax increases would not affect only the super-rich, but also people earning a high, though not extravagant, annual income of more than 600,000 Norwegian kroner ($77,120).

So, it’s a “soak the rich” strategy that would affect Norwegians who likely think of themselves as unmistakably middle-class — and unwilling to hand over more to the taxman.

The tabloid VG in July launched on its website a “Jonas Tax calculator” (named after Støre), where readers can plug in their financial details to find out if or by how much Støre’s tax-hike pledge will affect them.

Truls Wickholm, a Labor lawmaker from Oslo who sits on the parliament’s finance and economic committee, said the party felt “the need to be upfront with voters about what welfare is actually going to cost.”

(politico)

Norwegian airport operator Avinor has officially opened the new Nkr 3.7bn (US$468m) terminal at Bergen Airport, in Flesland, Norway. Opened on time and within budget, the terminal has the capacity to accommodate up to 10 million passengers annually.

Speaking at the opening ceremony, Erna Solberg, Norway’s Prime Minister, said, “Flesland plays a vital role in tourism and industry in the region. Now that the airport has doubled its capacity, we have a large international airport that Western Norway can be proud of. This is a state-run flagship project that has run on schedule and within budget and Avinor can be proud of the work that went into this expansion.”

Covering nearly 680,000ft², travelers can now enjoy a more spacious airport with an increased number of restaurants and shops. The design of the airport and technical solutions offers big energy savings in addition to environmental benefits.

“We’re now providing even better facilities for travelers and airlines,” said Aslak Sverdrup, airport director, Avinor. “Hopefully this will mean more direct flights to big, important domestic and foreign destinations.”

Dag Falk-Petersen, CEO of Avinor, said, “This is a very important day for Norwegian aviation and we are very proud of the new Flesland airport. Bergen now has a fantastic airport that will take us into the future. Thousands of people have been working day and night since the decision to expand was made in 2014.”

(N.Sethu)