MP for the Left-Green Movement Lilja Mósesdóttir declared on RÚV’s political chat program Silfur Egils yesterday that she will not vote in favor of the government’s Icesave bill. She has yet to decide whether she will abstain or vote against it.
Mósesdóttir explained that she doubts Icelanders are able to live up to the commitments which they are agreeing to in relation to Icesave and other agreements, Fréttabladid reports.
Mósesdóttir said she is not against negotiating on Icesave but she believes the current agreement isn’t favorable enough, although it improved considerably with the preconditions introduced by the Icelandic parliament last summer.
However, Iceland’s negotiating parties, the UK and the Netherlands, could not agree to all the preconditions and so a new agreement was made last month. That agreement is currently being debated in parliament.
Mósesdóttir also criticized the International Monetary Fund for not having published its calculations on how much debt Iceland can handle.
The MP said it was strange that in November last year, the IMF had stated that a debt ratio higher than 240 percent of gross domestic product was unbearable.
Now the IMF claims the country can handle 310 percent without publishing any calculations on how they have reached that conclusion, Mósesdóttir claimed.
The IMF completed its review of Iceland’s economic stabilization program last week.
Party group chairperson of the Left-Greens Gudfrídur Lilja Grétarsdóttir said Mósesdóttir’s stand regarding Icesave doesn’t come as a surprise. She herself is optimistic about a fortunate solution to the Icesave dispute.
“We have reached a point where we have come back from a very tight position and have to finish the matter. If it is supposed to be solved, it has to be done now,” Grétarsdóttir said.
The Left-Green Movement is part of the coalition in Iceland’s government with the Social Democrats and yet its MPs have often been openly opposed the cabinet’s decisions in regard to Icesave. Former minister of health, Ögmundur Jónasson, resigned because of it.
Stöd 2 reported that with Mósesdóttir’s announcement, the government’s majority for the Icesave bill has dropped from 34 MPs to 33. There are 63 MPs in total in parliament.
Four other Left-Green MPs, Grétarsdóttir, Jónasson, Atli Gíslason and Ásmundur Einar Dadason, have expressed doubts regarding the bill, but have not announced whether they intend to vote for or against it.
The smallest possible majority is 32 MPs, so formally the government can handle two MPs from its own ranks voting against the bill. In theory, the bill can also be passed if four MPs of the coalition parties abstain.
However, such a conclusion would prove weak for the government and it is questionable whether the Social Democrat-Left-Green coalition could sustain would that be the case.
Click here to read more about Icesave.
