rfmcdonald (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rfmcdonald) wrote2009-06-10 06:51 pm
rfmcdonald) wrote2009-06-10 06:51 pm
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[BRIEF NOTE] "Nunarput utoqqarsuanngoravit" ("You Our Ancient Land!")
I'd like to thank Will for informing me that Greenland's left-wing Inuit Ataqatigiit party is forming Greenland's new coalition government.
This comes just as the self-rule agreement with Denmark that I blogged about last year comes into force on the 21st of this month.
The question of what would happen if Greenland became an independent state--importantly, as a viable state, since its current economy heavily dependent on Danish subsidies would make independence spectacularly risky--doesn't seem to have crossed the minds of Canadian policymakers. European policymakers seem to have given the issue some thought, for even though Greenland left the then-European Community in 1985, some people in the European Union are interested in forging new relationship based on common interests in fishing, in energy and mineral resources, in the island's strategic position, and so on. Perhaps, like Iceland now, an independent Greenland will use its independence to move into the comforting embrace of a much larger bloc capable of protecting its interests? But, of course, Canada and the European Union are not the entire world, not even the entire Arctic world ...
(The title of this post is Greenland's national slogan, incidentally.)
Greenland's pro-independence leftist party Inuit Ataqatigiit, which won the Danish territory's legislative election on June 2, has agreed to form a coalition with two centrist parties, it said Sunday.
The three parties will hold a majority with 19 of 31 seats in the local parliament, the Landsting, IA leader Kuupik Kleist said in a statement.
IA, which ousted the social democratic Siumut party after 30 years in power, will hold 14 seats, the Democrats four seats and the Kattusseqatigiit Partiiat one seat.
Even though Siumut and IA had served in a coalition together as recently as 2007, Kleist had ruled out forming an alliance with Siumut after it became embroiled in a slew of scandals in recent months.
Final details still needed to be worked out on the government coalition and the cabinet portfolios were to be divided up Monday, Greenlandic radio KNR reported.
This comes just as the self-rule agreement with Denmark that I blogged about last year comes into force on the 21st of this month.
The question of what would happen if Greenland became an independent state--importantly, as a viable state, since its current economy heavily dependent on Danish subsidies would make independence spectacularly risky--doesn't seem to have crossed the minds of Canadian policymakers. European policymakers seem to have given the issue some thought, for even though Greenland left the then-European Community in 1985, some people in the European Union are interested in forging new relationship based on common interests in fishing, in energy and mineral resources, in the island's strategic position, and so on. Perhaps, like Iceland now, an independent Greenland will use its independence to move into the comforting embrace of a much larger bloc capable of protecting its interests? But, of course, Canada and the European Union are not the entire world, not even the entire Arctic world ...
(The title of this post is Greenland's national slogan, incidentally.)