I spoke with my boss and I’m now unofficially the Iceland Bureau Chief for The Agenda with Steve Paikin. It only makes sense to make this entirely-made-up appointment public today after a historic victory for The Best Party in the Reykjavik municipal elections. For those of you unfamiliar with the ins and outs of Iceland’s municipal elections wake-up please, this is important!
Voters in Iceland's capital have dumped the city's traditional political leaders in favour of a new, humour-based party founded by a popular comedian.
The Best Party won slightly more than a third of the vote in Saturday's municipal election -- more than any of the establishment parties.
"Nobody needs to be frightened of the Best Party because it's the best," party leader and comedian Jon Gnarr told RUV, a public broadcaster. "And we only want what is best -- if we didn't, we'd be called the Worst Party or the Bad Party."
I can see exactly why this happened. The country is in huge financial trouble, it owes the British and Dutch governments billions of dollars and one of their smaller volcanoes just messed up international air travel for weeks. Nobody likes Iceland. Iceland needs a laugh. Hence the popularity of the political party with campaign promises of free towels at all swimming pools and a polar bear for the zoo. Check out this awesome campaign video:
Some of you may recall that we here at The Agenda did a week of programming focusing on different countries in crisis for which I produced a program about Iceland. For those of you who don’t remember it, or would simply like to watch it again and again, here it is. By the end you’ll know more about the history, language and economic turmoil of this odd little European island nation. Njóttu! (That means enjoy in Icelandic.)
