Greenland’s parliament calls an early election
Snap election comes amid factional rivalry within leading party, and heated debate over a proposed mining project
Erik Jensen, now chair of the Siumut party, addresses Inatsisartut in an October 2019 file photo. (Krestia DeGeorge photo)
Greenland’s national assembly, Inatsisartut, forced an early election on Tuesday, amid widening divisions in its largest political party and the collapse of the most recent governing coalition.
The snap election, while widely expected, comes at a time when deliberations over whether to permit the potentially lucrative Kuannersuit rare-earths and uranium mine in southern Greenland have taken center stage in the island’s politics. Backers of the project hope it will speed Greenland along its path to independence from Denmark, but opponents fear it would leave behind a legacy of pollution.
“There are several reasons why we are holding an early election,” Kim Kielsen, the premier said. “But we need to look ahead, and we need to prepare ourselves to come together again as a country.”
The election will be held on April 6 in conjunction with municipal elections. Kielsen’s party, Siumut, currently holds the most seats in Inatsisartut, though not an outright majority. But even Siumut wins a new majority, the election will by all accounts mark the end of Kielsen’s tenure as premier.
Kielsen initially took over the position on an interim basis in 2014. He has since won two elections, most recently in 2018, but has been unable to shake criticism of his leadership style, and in November he lost the chairmanship of his Siumut party to Erik Jensen, a former cabinet member who now sits as a rank-and-file member member of Inatsisartut.
Kielsen, however, did not follow custom and step aside at the time to allow Jensen to become premier. The emerging internal rivalry, combined with Jensen’s apparent backtracking on what had long been Siumut’s solid support for the Kuannersuit (also known as Kvanefjeld) mine, led the party’s ally, Demokraatit, last week to pull out of the governing coalition, leaving Kielsen with the support of only 11 of Inatsisartut’s 31 members.
Kielsen and Siumut had hoped it could find a way to remain in power, but after talks to form a new coalition failed, a majority of members of Inatsisartut signalled Tuesday that they supported holding vote of a no-confidence to trigger an election.
Addressing the assembly during the opening meeting of its winter session Tuesday, Jensen accepted that an election was unavoidable, but said he regretted that it had not been possible to form a new majority.
A poll conducted in January by Ilisimatusarfik, Greenland’s university for the newspaper Sermitsiaq projected that IA, the largest opposition party, would win an election.
This article originally appeared at Arctic Today and is republished with permission.
Very interesting! A big contrast to our Nunavut Government, where does our Nunavut Government stand on the Baffinland issue?
A good question, but also necessary to ask what jurisdiction the GN has over the Baffinland case. The Inatsisartut in Greenland appears to have sovereignty over mining, while here the RIO seems to have all the negotiating power. I don’t know the mechanics though, these are mere impressions. That said, a federal election would be welcomed at this point as our representation at the federal level to date has been exceptionally weak.
We have a consensus government no party politics, therefore respect the process created through the Nunavut agreement
Respect, but acknowledge the system’s many weaknesses at the same time.
“Backers of the project hope it will speed Greenland along its path to independence from Denmark, but opponents fear it would leave behind a legacy of pollution.”
Let’s be honest: this is a PERFECT opportunity to in effect, declare the Greenlandic equivalent of a HARD BREXIT — by voting for ANY party that will STOP the rare earth extraction project ASAP. If the supporters of the rare earth extraction project think it will help Greenland TOWARDS independence, they are 100% wrong. This project will ACTUALLY will make Greenland FULLY DEPENDENT on the ‘international community’ and the ‘world trade system’ (for example, the ‘Australian’ company involved here is not REALLY Australian, but majority Chinese owned: “The site is being developed by the Australian firm Greenland Minerals, whose largest shareholder is the rare-earth giant Shenghe Resources, whose own largest shareholder is a research institute subordinated to a Chinese government department, facts that have attracted the interest of security researchers.”
And even if it was fully Australian, what does Australia (or the US or any other nation, perhaps including Denmark itself) REALLY know about the REAL interests of the residents of the island? Answer: only what they might read about in articles like this one (and that isn’t much to craft a foreign policy on)….
The only thing I know is (being a firm supporter of the original BREXIT from afar — and who wishes his home country — the USA — would have pulled out of ALL the treaties we are tied down to by BEFORE Jan 20, 2021 (when Pres. Trump was forced out of office) and STAYED OUT OF THEM — to truly become an INDEPENDENT NATION. You can NOT be truly independent as a nation or as a people if you have trade agreements, military agreements, etc. that tie you down to ANY NATION on the planet, no matter how “benevolent” they may seem…. I hope those who think the opposite will realize the error of their ways and vote against the FOREIGN EXPLOITATION of their island so Greenland CAN become a true nation, INDEPENDENT FROM the rest of the world, and thus, a truly FREE NATION….