The devalued Prime Minister of a devalued Government

You would think that Icelandic MP’s would have had the guts to stand up to the architects of the ruin in this manner now that this country is in a worse shape than the UK. 

But they won’t. Instead, foreign minister Ossur Skarphedinsson has decided to hand Valgerdur Sverrisdottir a position as a leader of new council on international development.  This is on the same weekend that Morgunbladid publishes its findings on the privatization of the banks when Valgerdur was Minister of Commerce and states that the whole thing was designed to get the banks into the hands of people loyal to the Independent Party and Valgerdur’s Progressive Party.

It should be noted that Ossur Skarphedinsson is in the Alliance Party, a rival political party. Aren’t there any qualified people within his own ranks? The position is unpaid but it would look good on the CV of a quite a few people. Besides, isn’t it odd to hand such a prestigious position to a person who was instrumental in privatizing the banks and then sat herself on the board of Gift, a company most people didn’t know existed anymore but was an investor for the group that got the banks? A business that used to be an insurance company that people thought had folded but had billions to spend in money from its customers, who were the rightful sharholders. Money that bought the large owners of Kaupthing like Olafur Olafsson, the Exista brothers and Kristjan Loftsson, the one whose interests in whaling are more important than the nation’s reputation, their way into billionaire heaven. 

The question is, why don’t the Alliance Party, Left Greens, Progressive Party and Independent Party just form a single party? Or are the Icelandic political parties just like the shell companies that the banks created to hike up the value in their own stock, all the same but different in the name just for show?