OSLO: It should be a prime minister’s dream re-election scenario — strong oil-based economic growth, low unemployment and the kudos of seeing your country rated best place to live in the world by the United Nations.
It’s all come true for Norway’s centre-right Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik, but he still looks headed for defeat in a Sept. 12 parliamentary election.
The winners are likely to be members of a “Red-Green” alliance, dominated by the opposition Labour Party which accuses Bondevik of handing tax cuts to the rich and doing too little to help education, care for the elderly and create jobs.
Many voters also give Bondevik scant credit for the economic upturn, reckoning it is caused by record high world oil prices out of the government’s control.
Vast oil wealth also means almost any problem can be fixed in Norway — the world’s number three exporter behind Saudi Arabia and Russia — and so potholes in roads or crumbling school buildings quickly get portrayed as government failures.
“The problem is that Norway has greater possibilities than almost any other nation but we’re not using them well enough,” said Jens Stoltenberg, 46-year-old head of the Labour Party who is likely to be the next prime minister.
“The government is using a lot of money to cut taxes, but in some areas like care for the elderly, standards have gone down,” he told Reuters outside a shopping centre in eastern Oslo during a recent campaign stop.
“In schools, the number of pupils has risen compared to the number of teachers. And unemployment is around 100,000 people, or 4.7 per cent. That’s higher than normal in Norway,” he said.
Bondevik argues that high-spending social democracy is not the solution for Europe. Cabinet ministers note that German voters are likely to shift right and oust the Social Democrats of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder on Sept. 18.
Schroeder can only dream of the kind of economic statistics enjoyed by Norway but which are still unlikely to save Bondevik.
Norway’s economic growth is set to reach about 4 per cent this year, interest rates are close to record lows at 2 per cent, annual inflation is a tiny 1.1 per cent, and unemployment, by the most closely watched measure, is just 3.7 per cent.
The 2005 UN Development Programme (UNDP) report has placed Norway top of about 180 nations as the best country in which to live, ranked by wealth, education and life expectancy.
Norway has topped the survey every year since 2001, when Bondevik, a priest in Norway’s Lutheran church, took office from a short-lived government led by Stoltenberg.
“Being top (of the UN ranking) doesn’t mean that everything is perfect. We have many unsolved problems in our welfare state,” Bondevik, 58, told Reuters. “But things can’t be chaotic as the opposition says.”
The government says it will keep cutting taxes and will modernise the welfare state by privatising some state services.
“It’s true that things in Norway are pretty good,” said Ester Holt, a 79-year-old who plans to vote Labour. “But this is a very expensive country. My flat costs 7,000 crowns ($1,129) to rent a month and that takes most of my pension.”
While most countries struggle with too little money to keep campaign promises, Norway has more than enough cash thanks to oil. But the central bank has said Norway should not spend too much now or it could risk the fate of 17th century Spain, where Latin American gold sparked inflation and derailed the economy.
A Norwegian state fund saving surplus oil cash for future generations recently topped $190 billion, or $41,000 for each of Norway’s 4.6 million people.
The knowledge of wealth means Norwegians widely expect everything to be best.
A question beloved of Norway’s political commentators goes: “If Norway is the best country in the world, why ...”
The rest of the sentence varies but some recent endings included asking why some prisoners are freed early from jail because of a lack of space? Or why children get no lunch at school, forcing parents to send sandwiches. Or why was part of the navy tied up in port last year for lack of cash?
The far-right opposition Progress Party is best at playing on expectations of a life of luxury bankrolled by oil.—Reuters
