| The Boston Globe Thursday, 10-SEP-1987
Copenhagen -- Queen Margrethe II yesterday asked Prime Minister
Poul Schlueter to form a new government after he resigned in the
wake of a deadlocked election. After a brief audience with the queen
at Amalienborg Palace, Schlueter said he expected to name a narrowly
based Cabinet today and to begin preparing a legislative economic
program to present next month. Schlueter handed his resignation
to the queen yesterday after his four-party right-of-center coalition
suffered losses in an election Tuesday. The two-party socialist
oppostion emerged as the largest bloc with 81 seats, against 70
for the four rightist parties. (AP)
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| From: [email protected] (JULIAN M. ISHERWOOD)
Newsgroups: clari.news.gov.international,clari.news.europe,
clari.news.politics,clari.news.gov.corrupt
Subject: Danish prime minister resigns
Date: Thu, 14 Jan 93 11:57:32 PST
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (UPI) -- Prime Minister Poul Schluter announced
his resignation Thursday following the publication of a judicial report
that accused him of giving misleading information to Parliament and the
parliamentary Justice Committee.
"I do not agree with the conclusions of the report, but I feel I
must take the consequences of its conclusions and resign," Schluter
told a news conference.
"The current coalition Conservative and Liberal parties will be
producing a working program for the government under the leadership of
the finance minister, Mr. Henning Dyremose," said Schluter, 63, who has
governed Denmark for 10 years under center-right governments.
It remained unclear Thursday whether a majority in Parliament would
accept the current government simply under new leadership, or whether
parties would require negotiations for the formation of a new
government.
"We will be looking for a round of government negotiations," said
Marianne Jelved, leader of the small but pivotal Radical Liberal Party,
which holds the balance of power between socialists and non-socialists
in Parliament and has recently increasingly taken sides in favour of a
Social Democratic alternative to Schluter's government.
The Social Democratic Party of Poul Nyrup Rasmussen has long been
pushing in the wings for a chance to take over the government after 10
years in the political wilderness.
"We are not immediately willing to accept Dyremose," Jelved added.
Schluter's decision came after a day of turmoil in Copenhagen
following the publication of a 32-month, 6,000-page judicial report that
mapped the ministerial and civil service responsibility for an illegal
1987 decision to stop family reunions of Tamil refugees living in
Denmark.
Apart from judging the decision illegal, the mammoth report said
Schluter had subsequently misled Parliament over the case, which
involved decisions taken by now-retired Justice Minister Erik Ninn-
Hansen.
"Poul Schluter has kept information from Parliament and the
parliamentary Judicial Committee...and he must have known this," said
Supreme Court Judge Mogens Hornslet in his report.
"Schluter must have realized that there was a conflict between
information supplied to the parliamentary Judicial Committee and the
parliamentary ombudsman and the information that Poul Schluter was in
possession of," the report said.
In particular, Judge Hornslet called attention to a parliamentary
speech in which Schluter told members "nothing in this case has been
swept under the carpet," and said that after its inquiries, the court
found the statement untrue.
Apart from severe criticism of Schluter, the report also broadly
criticized a wide range of civil servants and two ministers for what
appeared to be an attempted cover-up of the affair. In one case,
important notes surrounding the affair had been shredded by a senior
civil servant, the report said.
The publication of the report Thursday plunged Denmark into
government crisis at a sensitive time for the country. A decision on who
will govern Denmark is unlikely to be taken for several days, if not
weeks, and is likely to paralyze domestic politics with the inability of
a caretaker government under Schluter to take decisions.
Schluter's decision also comes at a difficult time internationally
for Denmark, which has to take care of its current presidency of the
European Community and later this year hold a second referendum on
whether to ratify the Maastricht Treaty on European union.
With domestic politics concentrated on choosing a successor to the
Schluter government, campaigning for the as yet unscheduled second
referendum is likely to be postponed, aggravating worries in the rest of
Europe that Danes may once again reject the treaty.
The Radical Liberal Party said on Tuesday it believes that a change
of government in favor of the Social Democrats would increase chances
for Danes voting in favor of the Maastricht Treaty in any new
referendum.
|
| From: [email protected] (Reuter / Lars Foyen)
Newsgroups: clari.world.europe.northern,clari.biz.market.news,
clari.biz.economy.world,biz.clarinet.sample
Subject: Markets fear move to the left in Danish elections
Date: Tue, 9 Aug 94 6:40:05 PDT
COPENHAGEN, Aug 9 (Reuter) - Denmark looks set to move
further to the left or sharply to the right in elections later
this year, according to an opinion poll on Tuesday which caused
concern on financial markets.
The Gallup survey in national daily Berlingske Tidende, the
first Danish opinion poll since June, showed a leftist majority
for the ruling Social Democrats, its Radical Liberal coalition
partner and the opposition far-left Socialist Peoples Party.
Danish bond prices fell sharply and the 10-year yield gap
with Germany -- a barometer of investor confidence -- increased
to 137 basis points from 130. Analysts predicted the gap, only
24 basis points in January, would widen further.
Rasmussen must call parliamentary elections for early
December at the latest.
The right-wing opposition led by former foreign minister
Uffe Ellemann-Jensen includes his Liberals, the Conservatives
and the populist, far right Progress Party which has moderated
its controversial anti-tax, anti-immigrant policies.
The poll showed Ellemann-Jensen's bloc leading the
government parties by eight percentage points. But the
right-wing grouping was two points behind the combined forces of
the government and the Socialists.
Prime Minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen's four-party centre-left
government, which came to power in January 1993 when
Conservative Poul Schlueter resigned in a refugee scandal after
10 years in power, is a child of Denmark's traditionally
consensus-seeking politics.
"The poll will not move us closer to the Socialists. It is
the present government's results that count," said Frank Jensen,
the Social Democrats' political spokesman.
But with Gallup showing the government's two small centrist
partners failing a two percent threshold to parliament,
political analysts say Rasmussen will have little choice but to
reach out to the Socialists for a chance to stay in power.
Rasmussen, 51, a pragmatic economist with working class
roots, will face strong pressure from the left wing of his own
party which is disenchanted with the government's centrist
policies and want formal cooperation with the Socialists.
But the red-green Socialists' recipe for tackling Danish
unemployment -- running at 12.3 percent despite forecasts of 4.0
percent GDP growth this year -- through more public sector jobs
and a 30-hour work-week is anathema to markets.
Financial analysts had already expressed concern that
Denmark would not find the political will in an election year to
tighten fiscal policy forcefully to rein in a booming economy
and counter inflation fears.
The 1995 draft state budget is due on August 30.
Economy Minister Marianne Jelved told Reuters the government
stood by its plans for only a modest fiscal tightening,
estimating it was enough to keep forecasts of two percent
inflation this year and 2.5 percent in 1995 on target.
Analysts at Danish bank Jyske Bank have estimated the
Danish-German yield gap could shrink to 50-75 basis points in
the event of a right-wing government with traditional
conservative fiscal policies.
Ellemann-Jensen has said he wants to cut the budget deficit
by an additional 10 billion crowns ($1.61 billion). "It is quite
abnormal to have a 50 billion crown ($8.04 billion) deficit
during an economic upswing," he said.
|
| COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) -- He promised to support impotent men
and vowed to improve the weather. His platform endorsed ``the right
to be dumb, ugly and rich.'' He called his campaign a practical
joke.
But the joke may be on Danish voters, who elected Jacob
Haugaard to Denmark's parliament Wednesday. A popular musician, stand-up
comedian and actor, Haugaard heads ``The Party of Deliberate
Work-Shy Elements.''
``It's incredible that I got elected on this twaddle,''
Haugaard, 42, told a Danish newspaper Thursday.
While the top parties tried to rebuild a Cabinet after an
election that toppled Denmark's government, Haugaard was relishing
his victory as the first independent parliamentarian since the
1950s.
A self-proclaimed ``court jester'' running for the eighth time,
Haugaard captured more than 23,000 votes in elections for the
179-seat assembly.
His platform was clear: ``Shorter queues at supermarkets' cash
registers, the right to be dumb, ugly and rich and bachelors to
single mothers.''
His seven previous campaigns were ``practical jokes,'' he told
the newspaper Ekstra Bladet.
``And my time in the (parliament) will be the same,'' promised
Haugaard, elected in Aarhus, Denmark's second largest town.
But Haugaard could play a key role if the Social Democratic
Party or the Liberal-Conservative opposition stand even on an
issue. And some people weren't laughing at his election.
``Seriously, I think that there are greater expectations (of
politicians) in the population,'' said interim Prime Minister Poul
Nyrup Rasmussen, who resigned Thursday after his government's
surprising election defeat.
Haugaard, who has refused to say which party he supports,
performed his first task as legislator Thursday when he met Queen
Margrethe II. The queen will ask the party with the most support to
form a government.
Sporting his trademark three-piece suit made of coffee sack
cloths, Haugaard showed up to see the monarch bearing flowers and
wearing a multicolored tie, a large gray hat and a long brown
leather coat.
Asked afterward which party he would support, Haugaard was
categorical: ``I didn't side with anyone, not even with myself.''
Election expert Soren Risbjerg Thomsen told Danish radio that
Haugaard was mainly elected by left-wingers and first-time voters.
``Politicians may behave a little ridiculous sometimes and
people feel that they can just as well vote for a comic,'' Risbjerg
Thomsen said.
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