After political scandals, Icelanders head back to polls

REYKJAVIK: Icelanders were voting Saturday in the second snap election in a year marked by deep distrust in the scandal-hit political class despite a thriving economy bolstered by booming tourism.
Prime Minister Bjarni Benediktsson of the conservative Independence Party called the vote last month after a junior member of the three-party centre-right coalition quit over a legal dispute involving his father.
Saturday's election is Iceland's fourth since 2008.
Opinion polls published Friday by public broadcaster RUV and the daily Morgunbladid show the Independence Party could win 17 seats in the 63-seat parliament, the Althingi.
The rival Left-Green Movement and its potential partners – the Social Democratic Alliance and the anti-establishment Pirate Party – would together win 29 seats, short of an outright majority.
But with help from a fourth party, they could dethrone the centre-right and become Iceland's second left-leaning government since its independence from Denmark in 1944.
"If these are the election results, it's a call for the opposition to form a government," Left-Green leader Katrin Jakobsdottir, 41, told Morgunbladid.
People were standing in line inside the modern Reykjavik city hall as polls opened, but some were weary of endless votes and cronyism entangling the establishment.
"I hate the election and it's the last time I'm going to vote! I want change! We have the same crooks coming back again and again," said Jonsson Hjorttur, 55.
"It's a good thing to have a second snap vote. I'm happy to see a chance for Iceland to form a new government," added Ragnar Veigar Gudmundsson, a 39-year-old manager.
Under the Icelandic system, the president, who holds a largely ceremonial role, tasks the leader of the biggest party with trying to form a government.
"The fear is whether there will be a possibility to form a government," Arnar Thor Jonsson, a law professor at Reykjavik University, told AFP, recalling that negotiations to form a coalition after the October 2016 election took three months.
High growth, low unemployment
Since the 2008 financial crisis, when Iceland's three major banks collapsed and the country teetered on the verge of bankruptcy, it has made a spectacular recovery with robust growth of 7.2% in 2016 and unemployment at an enviable 2.5%.
But anger and lack of trust in the financial elite and several politicians, who were implicated in the Panama Papers scandal that revealed global tax evasion networks, has shaken up politics on the island.
"People are rising up since the 2008 collapse and standing up against corruption and lack of transparency," Steinunn ragnarsdottir, an opera director in her 50s, told AFP.
A year ago, snap elections were called after then-prime minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson was pressured to resign when he was named in the leak which exposed offshore tax havens.
More than 600 Icelanders – a surprisingly high number in a country of 335,000 – were also named in the documents, including Benediktsson, then finance minister.
Despite that, Benediktsson was able to build a coalition with the centrist Bright Future and centre-right Reform Party, holding a one-seat majority in parliament before becoming the shortest-lived government in Iceland's history.
Independence Party supporters still view it as the main force for economic stability and growth. Nearly half of the postwar prime ministers came from the eurosceptic party.
Iceland's EU membership bid ended in acrimony in 2015 over fishing rights.
Eva Sveinsdottir, a 33-year-old conservative voter, said the former centre-right government's decision to end the accession talks "saved Iceland after the 2008 crisis".
"We are in a much better situation than Greece," she said. "If we were a member (the EU) would take the fishing areas from us."
'Rich parents'
Other voters are drawn to the Left-Green Movement which calls for investments in social welfare, affordable housing and tax hikes for the wealthiest.
Construction is booming: cranes dominate the skies in Reykjavik city centre, away from Iceland's breathtaking volcanoes and glaciers.
But Iceland's thriving tourism scene has caused an increase in housing prices and a shortage of apartments, many of which are rented out to tourists.
According to Iceland's Housing Financing Fund, rents in the capital rose by 13.9% in the year to September.
"I work in an ordinary store and my income is not enough to make ends meet," Jarya Sukuay, a 23-year-old voter in Reykjavik, told AFP.
"The people in the government do not understand (working people) because they all have rich parents." — AFP