Crisis Toppled Government, Spawns New Political Faction

An unlikely band of middle-aged protestors ditched their previous weapons — pots and pans and limp yogurt. They threw bricks, rocks and glass bottles at police guarding Lækjartorg, the house of Iceland’s Prime Minister.

Then the police prepared for something that hadn’t happened here in 50 years. As they readied tear gas, a group of protestors broke from the pack, stood in front of the victimized officers like a phalanx and calmed the agitated crowd.

“They are not our enemy. Why are you attacking the police?” yelled the small group of protestors sporting orange ribbons.

They lined up side by side with the police and said, “If you throw rocks at them you have to throw rocks at us.”

And that was the beginning of the so called orange movement.

Return to fishing and farming roots

The orange movement, or the Borgarahreyfingin, led by a handful of activists, seeks to return the government to the people and the nation to its roots of fishing and farming, after Iceland’s three major banks collapsed in October under billions of dollars of bad debt.

Only four months after its founding, the Borgarahreyfingin won four of 63 seats in Parliament on April 25. Their platform: root-out government corruption and take down the line-up of greedy bankers blamed for enticing a nation to trade a classically humble life for wild investments in the global financial market.

The movement’s tech-savvy leaders, old enough to call the nearly 10-year-banking boom a moment’s transgression, use YouTube and Facebook to get their message to the people because they have no money and the public can access the internet easily and cheaply.

Still despite its grassroots expertise, the media largely ignored the orange movement and until recently the people knew little of it except for its storied birth and signature color.

Many people didn’t even know what to call it. Was it the orange party, the Borgarahreyfingin, or the civic movement, as it loosely translates?

But the government knew it well and, like their Viking forbearers, intended to pillage from it what it could in hopes of winning or maintaining the majority in Parliament.

In the months leading up to the election, to garner the support of a public who distrusted them abhorrently, the government adopted the policies of the civic movement, threatening to steal its would-be voters and shut it out. But persistence paid off for the little party that could.

A mosquito buzzing around an elephant

“We want to be this mosquito fly… that just pushes politicians to do the things they promised,” said Birgitta Jónsdóttir, a leader of the movement, as she gathered with members one month before the election to film a You Tube video in a storefront on the main drag in Reykjavik.

She wore black from her shirt to her long skirt to her sneakers. Even in her forties, her long bohemian hair grazed her elbow.

In front of her, a member of the orange party adjusted the focus on a small camera fixed on a tall tripod. As she recited protest poetry, an orange symbol made of colored construction paper shaped like a U with crossed ends hung on the stark white wall behind her.

Light from the office filtered through orange chiffon curtains, casting a warm glow on the street that members walked daily armed with clipboards and pens in hopes of getting people to pledge their votes.

When not filming, Jónsdóttir kept busy sending emails, writing blogs and articles and placing phone calls.

Like more than 15,000 Icelanders, she lost her job due to the economic collapse, which, also like many embittered Icelanders, she blamed on government fraud and corruption.

“What everybody feels here is that everybody failed us,” she said. “Iceland is like Enron.”

From the beginning, the orange movement ran on a platform of reform. They wanted to fight corruption with a national voting system for people to vote on issues such as whether Iceland should join the European Union. They wanted the minority party in parliament to be able to impeach the majority by constitutional right; they wanted to grant the United Kingdom the right to seize the assets of those responsible for the crash and, most importantly, they wanted a new constitution—one suited for today’s republic, not for a the colony of a Danish king, who presided over Iceland before it won its independence.

They needed 5 percent of the vote to win seats in parliament in the April election, but their obscurity—and little media attention—threatened their chances.

“I’m looking at the (news) paper right now, and I don’t see anything in here about them,” said Ingibjorg Bjornsdottir, a student at the University of Iceland. She complained the daily paper, Morgunbladid , as well as others, didn’t give new parties the coverage they needed to advance.

“Every party has to get equal space. They count the columns…So you can imagine how hard it is for a new party or movement to get started,” the student said.

Jónsdóttir didn’t have to imagine. She knew. Aside from receiving limited media coverage, she battled politicians who borrowed from her platform.

Prior to the election, the standing government called for a new constitution among other protestors’ demands.

“Let’s call it stealing the issues from us,” said Fridrik Gudmundsson, a teacher at the University of Iceland and a political candidate for the orange movement.

Left coops new party

This left little for the movements’ members to fight for. They and other protestors already got much of what they wanted before the movement launched their campaign, including the overthrow of the conservative Independence majority party and the resignations of Prime Minister Geir Haarde and leaders of the Financial Supervisory Authority and the central bank.

The interim government, the Social Democratic Alliance, even moved up the next election from 2011 to April.

The ruling party succeeded in stealing the thunder of emerging parties, said Hrannar Bjorn Arnarsson, a spokesman for Johanna Sigurdardottir, the interim Prime Minister.

“This prime minister made a big effort to embrace this new movement,” he said. “Maybe that effort also took the power of the new movement.”

Birgir Armannsson, an Independence Party MP, appealed to the newly skeptical mass of voters by admitting the protestors should blame the government for the kreppa, the Icelandic name for the crisis.

“Even though I supported the government, it should have done a better job of being aware of the crisis,” he said. “(We were) afraid that if you start telling people the banks are in trouble, it would create a run on the banks. I think in the beginning the government should have been more outspoken. That would’ve helped cause fear in society, but in the long run it’s better to be outspoken and tell people we don’t have the answers than to hide it.”

But the orange movement refused to concede that all of their demands had been met. They wanted to “get into the core of the corruption and clean it out” and in order to do that, they needed to get into Parliament.

Few doubted the potential of the movement to effect change, especially one made infamous for quelling an attack on the police. But as the interim government settled-in in January, many people believed a substantive change had already taken place and, according to polls, the public tended to favor the familiar parties over the new party of strangers.

“I didn’t expect the new movement to win,” said, Gudmundur Magnusson, a professor at the Academy of the Arts in Iceland who studied the orange movement.

A new party had not won seats in Parliament since 1999.

Still signs pointed to the unlikely victory of the orange movement. As the election neared, it gained momentum. Even Magnusson lauded the power of the protestors and the movement.

“We are in tune,” he said. “Even authorities cannot resist a mass who is in tune. It’s too powerful.”

April 25 proved him right. The civic movement garnered four seats in Parliament. The Social Democratic Alliance took the majority, winning 20 seats. Not since the conservative party’s beginnings 70 years ago has Iceland bucked its leadership and granted the leftists the majority.

Jónsdóttir always had faith that the party of a few could shape the politics of a nation.

“Its important people know their ability to change their social situation,” she said. “It’s important that we set an example in the interest of the nation. We just have to remind people that anybody can change the world.”

Many welcomed the surprise.

Simply put, said Magnusson, the professor of art, “It feels good to get in there and clean the shit out of the system.”