Radical Greenlanders call for new election

OTTAWA — Young Greenlanders are calling for a general election after the coalition that held together the 27-seat local parliament crumbled, leaving the Home Rule government in disarray.

“We have a crisis of sorts,” said Inuit Circumpolar Conference president Aqqaluk Lynge in Ottawa recently.

“For the first time, you have the current leadership not capable of carrying out what needs to be done.”

The Home Rule government’s former coalition fell apart when the majority supported a motion that would double members’ salaries.

The new package would include retirement benefits, free annual travel for families and access to better housing in Nuuk, where there is a 13-year waiting list for housing.

The move to boost salaries and benefits caused the radical left-wing Inuit Ataqatigiit Party to bolt from the coalition and it incited radical young Greenlanders to march in protest and take their call for a general election to the streets.

The break-up of the alliance between the social democratic Siumut party and the Inuit Ataqatigiit Party also left Greenland’s premier, Jonathan Motzfeldt, scrambling to form another coalition from among the four remaining political parties to keep his government afloat.

Last week, the Siumut Party and the centre-right Atassut Party said they would form a new coalition government to avoid having to call an election.

Some observers in Greenland say the Inuit Ataqatigiit Party may have had its bluff called.

Encouraged by a victory in last month’s Danish national elections, its members may have expected to force the Home Rule Government into an election by withdrawing their support from the coalition.

But now, the Inuit Ataqatigiit has lost the important cabinet seats it held in economic development: health and environment.

The most recent Greenland election was held in 1998, and the next one isn’t expected until 2003.

With the support of the new coalition, the Home Rule government hopes to push through the proposed legislation to increase members’ salaries as quickly as possible.

Meanwhile, outraged students are still adding signatures to a petition that calls for a new general election. They already have 10,000 names.

The student-run movement, called the “New Parliament Group,” says it will continue to protest the government and intends to collect signatures from half of Greenland’s voting population.

If the petition doesn’t lead to an election call, the group says it will “stand together and find methods of getting rid of these undemocratic careerists who hinder us from solving important problems in the country.”