Early last week, Icelanders were battening down the hatches in the face of a brutal windstorm which lasted three days and nights without cease.
Meteorologists were baffled by this, until they realized that the winds were actually caused by the simultaneous gales of laughter and sighs of relief from 400,000 people who just learned that Bjarni Bendiktsson was resigning from the position of finance minister after a decade of nepotism, scandals and quite astouding corruption.
For a glorious moment, it seemed that there might actually be some measure of comeuppance for a man who, until now, had seemed bulletproof from any meaningful consequences to his actions.
To those of us who had spent 6 weeks last summer protesting the illegal sale of Íslandsbanki, and demanding the resignation of the finance minister, for one brief shining moment it felt like victory.
Unfortunately, as the saying goes “if you don’t like the weather in Iceland, just wait 5 minutes.”
This proved to be all to pertinent as the winds seemed to shift again in favor of the finance minister.
Yet again Bjarni Benediktsson showed that there is no lack shame or brazenness to which he will not stoop. The bottom of the barrel in fact can be scraped through. And scrape he did.
Rather than take the hint and step out of the limelight quietly, taking the winnings from sale of Íslandsbanki with him, Bjarni decided that in fact there were still corrupt mountains left to conquer, and these particular peaks were overseas.
Speaking as a British national, I have lived through my fair share of corrupt and inept politicians who ride the Ferris wheel of cabinet positions, jumping around from positions of unimaginable responsibility and power without the slightest iota of relevant knowledge or experience of their field.
….I lived through Boris Johnson.
Healthcare, finance, education, foreign affairs. Qualifications? Doesn’t matter. As long as you toe the party line.
And if you fail, we will just have a cabinet reshuffle and put you in charge of an entirely different aspect of public life! And around and around they go….where they stop, nobody knows.
I am now saddened and angry to see that pattern repeating itself in Iceland, and in such a brazen way.
Without any sort of approval from the public who they are ostensibly meant to serve, we are now stuck with a foreign minister whose only relevant experience of overseas work was when he was busy setting up offshore companies to avoid paying taxes.
I worry that Iceland is slipping towards (and perhaps is already there) the sort of failed state of politics that I see when I look back at my native Britain, where lobbyists and corporate interests have long since seized the levers of power from the people, and as a result, the country has been chopped up and sold to the highest bidder.
I worry what a man like Bjarni Benediktsson, who has made no secret of his desire to privatize every aspect of Icelandic society he can get his hands on, will do with the freedom of access to any world leader he desires to connect with.
He could very quickly turn the country I love and call home into a global-scale yard sale. Everything must go.
I have long since stopped asking if it wouldn’t make more sense to perhaps have a nurse in charge of healthcare, or a teacher in charge of education. Unfortunately that is nothing but a pipe-dream.
I have lowered my sights a little now.
Can we not just have a politician who did not illegally sell a bank to his father? It doesn’t seem much to ask.
Perhaps I will ask Santa Claus.
The author is a manufacturing worker.
