Norway’s parliament is embroiled in a growing spending scandal that has brought the work of the wealthy Nordic country’s second most powerful official and a party leader arrested, triggering an investigation by the Norwegian parliament. police and risks eroding public trust in the political establishment.
The case centered on allegations that some lawmakers had taken advantage of a rule that would allow them to have “commuting apartments” paid for by parliament if they lived more than 40 kilometers from Oslo.
It all happened on Thursday night when Eva Kristin Hansen, the speaker of Norway’s parliament and the country’s highest-ranking official after the monarch, resigned when a local newspaper revealed she had been using an apartment building. commuting household despite owning a house only 29km from Oslo.
A few weeks earlier, Kjell Ingolf Ropstad resigned as leader of the centre-right Christian Democrats and became government minister after he requested a commuter apartment for his family while using his home. his parents hundreds of kilometers from Oslo as his registered address. owns a piece of property near the Norwegian capital.
On Thursday, prosecutors asked police to investigate six unnamed lawmakers over whether they committed fraud or other crimes, as experts warned the scandal threatened to erode Norwegian people’s high trust in politicians.
“These allegations can be really serious because they involve political institutions, not just individuals. It is not only trust in the political system but also at the heart of democracy. Now it’s important for parliament to recognize that they have a problem and find a solution,” said Signe Bock Segaard, a senior research fellow at Norway’s Institute for Social Research, on Friday.
Many politicians from most of Norway’s main parties – including Labor, Conservatives, Populist Progressives and the Socialist Left – have been implicated in the flat commute scandal.
Hansen, a member of the ruling centre-left Labor party, initially resisted pressure from across politics to resign but did so after police announced an investigation and parliamentary authorities said she had violate the rules. She blamed her difficult private life and said she was “very ill” by the time she claimed the apartment. Ropstad has said that he made mistakes that he deeply regrets.
Norwegian politics has been affected by an unusually large number of scandals in recent months, including a number of lawmakers accused of exaggerating or wrong travel expenses and former prime minister Erna Solberg break the regulations of Covid-19. There has also been a high-profile welfare scandal in which pension beneficiaries were wrongly convicted and money was taken.
Norway has one of the highest levels of trust in the world in politicians and the political system. However, experts say the scandals can give the impression that there are different rules for politicians.
“The construction of this story that politicians are granting themselves privileges that ordinary people cannot expect. This is definitely not good for the public’s trust in politicians,” said Hans Fredrik Marthinussen, a law professor at the University of Bergen.
Segaard said the country’s overall approval rating has been fairly stable, although it has dropped slightly since the spike following the 2011 far-right terrorist attack on the Labor Party, but has fallen among those with qualifications. low level of education.
“You should never take trust for granted. From a global perspective, the level of trust is very high in the Nordic countries. . . But the small recent drop we’ve seen could be a sign of a larger problem,” she added.
