A first in Europe.

Iceland elected a majority of women to parliament, according to results announced Sunday, September 26, the day after the vote for the country's general elections.

Of the 63 seats in the Althingi, 33 will be held by women, or 52.3%, according to final projections based on the final results of the ballot held on Saturday in the country of 370,000 inhabitants.

No country in Europe has so far crossed the symbolic 50% mark in a parliament, with Sweden so far in first place with 47% female MPs, according to data compiled by the World Bank.

"I am 85 years old, I have waited all my life for women to be in the majority (...), and I am really really happy," Erdna, a resident of Reykjavik, told AFP.

While several parties themselves reserve a minimum proportion of women among their candidates, no law imposes a quota of women for legislative elections in Iceland.

The Nordic country is consistently at the forefront of feminism and has been leading the World Economic Forum ranking for gender equality for 12 consecutive years.

"I am very satisfied that women have exceeded 50% of the seats, I think this is the normal course of what has happened in Iceland for a century," said Thora Kolbeinnsdottir, a bookseller and social worker.

Behind this historic female first, the main victim of these elections is paradoxically a woman: Prime Minister Katrin Jakobsdottir, whose left-wing environmentalist party lost three seats and came with 12.6% of the vote behind her two current right-wing allies. .

Iceland moves away from political deadlock scenario

The big winner is the Progress Party (center-right), which won 13 seats, five more than in the last elections in 2017, with 17.3% of the vote.

The jubilation reigned Saturday evening at the HQ of the party "back to the forefront of the political scene", launched under the vivas its leader Sigurdur Ingi Johannsson, who finds himself in the position of Prime Minister.

But the conservative party of ex-prime minister, Bjarni Benediktsson, remained Iceland's leading party with 24.4% of the vote, thus keeping its 16-seat contingent when polls predicted a decline.

With a total of 37 seats, the three allied parties therefore consolidate their majority in total, but the right finds itself in a position of strength with the option of finding another third partner that is closer ideologically, for example the centrist Reform Party. (five seats) or the Center (three deputies), or even the People's Party (six seats).

Although it is not certain that the three parties will continue to govern together and that the negotiations are traditionally long, Iceland is moving away from a scenario of political blockage that the polls feared.

Never since the spectacular collapse of Icelandic banks in 2008 and the severe crisis that ensued has an outgoing Icelandic government retained its majority.

We have to go back to 2003 to find a precedent.

Management of the health crisis welcomed

Discussions must take place between the three party leaders, and the question of the future tenant of Stjornarradid, the modest white house where the Icelandic heads of government sit, will necessarily arise, according to analysts. 

"Given the decline we are seeing, the Left-Greens may have to reassess their position in government," said Eva Önnudóttir, professor of political science at the University of Iceland.

Since 2017, the Prime Minister has made taxes more progressive, invested in social housing and extended parental leave.

His management of the Covid - only 33 dead - has been hailed.

But this rare left-wing ecologist in power has also had to give up to save her coalition, such as her promise to create a national park in the center of the country.

After a decade of crisis and scandals, the outgoing coalition marked the return of political stability in Iceland.

This is only the second time since the 2008 financial crisis that ruined banks and many Icelanders that a government has completed its term, with five elections taking place between 2007 and 2017.

With AFP

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