COPENHAGEN: Greenland’s ruling Siumut party narrowly won a snap election called after it became embroiled in a graft scandal, results showed yesterday, but it faced tough negotiations to form the next government to lead the vast resource-rich Arctic island.
Friday’s election was called after the Siumut-led government collapsed in September when its chief Aleqa Hammond, Greenland’s first female leader, was revealed to have used public money to cover private expenses.
Despite the affair, the Social Democrat Siumut party won 34.3 percent of the votes cast, just slightly ahead of its rival leftist Inuyt Ataqatigiit with 33.2 percent, according to the Danish news agency Ritzau.
But both parties won 11 seats in the 31-member parliament, meaning Siumut will face a challenge to form a majority.
The results mean that the populist Partii Naleraq, which won 11.6 percent of the vote, and centre-right Democrats, with 11.8 percent of the vote, are in strong positions to be kingmakers.
The campaign was dominated by the bleak economic outlook of the world’s largest island.
Hammond’s Siumut-led coalition collapsed in September after a parliamentary audit committee found that she had used government funds to cover private expenses including family members’ airline tickets and hotel mini-bar costs.
Friday’s vote came just 20 months after she won a general election where full independence from former colonial master Denmark was the top campaign issue and continues to divide political parties along with disputes over mining licences. But with a gross domestic product that shrank 1.9 percent to 13.6 billion kroner (€1.8bn) in 2013, the economy has since become an increasingly urgent issue for Greenland’s 57,000 inhabitants — of whom about 40,000 were eligible to vote.
The issue has grown in importance since it became clear that Greenland’s mineral wealth will take longer to develop than initially thought, meaning the island economy may be dependent for some time on an annual 3.3 billion kroner grant from Copenhagen.AFP
