- Title: Norway-At Sea: Voters Reject Norway's Moderate Labour Party In General Elections
- Date: 17th October 1997
- Summary: Norway shifted to the right in a general election that dumped Prime Minister Thorbjoern Jagland and opened the way for an extended period of political turmoil. Jagland, an inexperienced Labour Party leader fighting his first election as prime minister, failed to reach the 36.9 percent level of support that he had demanded from voters. The Labour Party won 35.2 percent of the vote and are double the size of the next biggest party in Norway, but Jagland was pinned into a corner by his specific condition that Labour had to win 36.9 percent of the vote to continue to govern. Labour will have 65 of the 165 seats in parliament, according to figures published when 95 percent of the vote had been counted. Apart from Labour's defeat, Norway's traditional political calm was shattered by the stunning success of the right-wing Progress Party, which won 15.3 percent of the vote and 25 seats in parliament. The Progress Party, a neo-Thatcherite grouping led by charismatic former businessman Carl Hagen, gathered the protest votes of Norwegians who feel their massive oil wealth is being poured into the wrong pockets. The Labour government has launched a Petroleum Fund to mop up the billions of oil dollars flooding into Norway's economy, but opinion polls showed Norwegians felt their health and welfare services and schools were suffering. Jagland said his government would resign after the October 13 autumn budget. The new prime minister of Norway Kjell Magne Bondevik, a former priest and ex-foreign minister who is the head of a three-party centrist coalition that can garner 42 seats took power on October 17. Many analysts say Bondevik's coalition will be too fragile to last through the harsh Norwegian political winter and that it will be snuffed out by the Labour Party or by conservative groups. Bondevik said he would seek cross-party support for his policies and there were even reports he would seek to patch up differences with the Conservative Party and form a much more powerful four-party coalition. Such a coalition would be a repeat of one that ruled for several years in the 1980s.
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- Location: NORWAY OSLO CITY HALL
- Reuters ID: LDL00127BS213
- Aspect Ratio: 4:3
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- Copyright Holder: Reuters Archive
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