Cynical opportunism & whaling licences - Icelandic politics reaches new lows

Just a few days ago, we gave an account of the long running saga in Iceland, where a snap election was being called, and a caretaker Government in place to manage business until the new one was formed.

There seemed to be an unwritten understanding that decision-making on contentious issues such as whaling licences should not happen during this intervening period. That’s a generally accepted principle in most mature democracies – you don’t seek to make capital or benefit out of moments like this as it's unconstitutional and, frankly, dishonest. But it seems that some vested interests couldn’t help seeing an opportunity to progress approval for two whaling licences in the dying hours of the caretaker Government.

And while it's scarcely believable, that’s exactly what has happened, and it’s a shameful indictment of Icelandic politics and the sway that powerful vested interests exert over it.

The outgoing Prime Minister, Bjarni Benediktsson, recently unmasked as a whaling apologist, and whose own Independence had its worst election ever, decided in a cynical last throw of the dice, that he’ll put Iceland’s dying whaling industry on life-support and licence it to go and slaughter whales once again. Whether by accident or design, Benediktsson was also Minister of Food, Agriculture and Fisheries in the previous Government, and has yet to formally hand over the reins. He is technically no more than a placeholder politician but he’s seemingly intent on making the most of the time he has left.

In an extraordinary statement to the media last night, he claimed that it was entirely appropriate to issue the licence as “There is no reason to wait for another minister to grant permission on the basis of the same law.”

"These cases have been dealt with by the ministry and now a conclusion has been reached after that, including after a statutory review process, and the law does not allow anything other than to grant such permissions, and now we have dealt with these cases."

And so the creaking, rusting Icelandic fleet will set sail once again to hunt and slaughter fin and minke whales, because a placeholder politician with no mandate signed a piece of paper saying they can.

We can be sure that constitutional lawyers are already reaching for their case law files. At the point when he signed the licence (on Wednesday by all accounts), Benedikstsson was a Minister without a mandate, and so his sign-off on the licence may be constitutionally dubious. We do know that the Social Democratic Alliance party, who gained the biggest share of the vote in the election, wants whaling to end. As the likely kingmakers in a forthcoming Government they should have a determining voice on the future of whaling, not a politician from a party that just lost the election.

The Icelandic Animal Protection Association (DÍS) condemned the decision and the way it was undertaken. “Whaling is an extremely controversial issue in Iceland and dissatisfaction with it extends far beyond Iceland. This is therefore a matter of interest that concerns many others than just those who are involved in this fishery in one way or another. It is unacceptable administration that a minister with little authority makes such a fatal decision right after the parliamentary elections and thereby ties the hands of the next governments," the coalition said in a statement.

Outgoing Prime Ministers in other mature democracies leave office with a resignation honours list and are determined to secure their legacy. Benediktsson appears to believe his legacy should be to honour a cruel and outdated industry in its death throes and which the majority of the Icelandic people oppose. Sadly, for the whales that will now be in the crosshairs of explosive harpoons, Iceland’s whaling saga is far from over.