June 12th, 2015

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The Danish house of Parliament, Christiansborg, surrounded by election posters (photo: Leif Jørgensen)

We are racing towards June 18. And the people are getting excited. A lot of votes are likely to shift – not just from the blue to the red bloc or vice-versa, but also between the parties on either side.

Alternative thinking
The surprise is that Alternativet – with the former minister of culture, Uffe Elbæk, at the helm – has struck a chord with the electorate, although very few seem to know who else is in his party. And even fewer what their policies are, except they proclaim they are not demanding anything but kindly advising if anybody will listen.

One thing is clear: they are definitely red and seem to have attracted support from socialists and left-liberals at will. So maybe a number of lefties really are looking for an alternative. They may get as much as 6-7 percent, overtaking Konservative, who in the blue camp do not look like surpassing 4 percent, no matter how steadfastly they march to the right with law and order painted all
over them.

Bashing the immigrants
One thing is for sure: nobody dares expressing sympathy for immigrants or refugees. Everybody understands that immigration is a necessity to maintain the welfare state, but not this side of June 18, thank you.

The result is in the balance. Some polls have even given the PM a small lead, so Lars Løkke Rasmussen is therefore now trying to trump her, but at the risk of trumping himself.

Rasmussen has painted himself into a corner with his inflexible, ‘no public spending increase’ stance. It would appear whatever he suggests will be financed by the development aid account. More defence, more health, more education, more police, but no immigrants to make the money. When the PM goes for his trout on these issues, he will be in trouble.

But so will she when the income from the oil fields dries out and extraordinary taxes from pension funds are paid up, as a tax increase will be the only logical possible solution to finance her spending spree.

Silence cannot continue
Talking of numbers, 140,000 Danish citizens living outside Denmark cannot vote as they have no residence here. Nor can 350,000 foreign citizens – living and paying tax here – although they can vote in the local elections.

On the total electorate of 4 million, we could have seen 10 percent more at the voting stations. Maybe we are heading towards a change of constitution to remedy that. In a democratic world it seems unsustainable to have this many outside the ballot range. And the problem will not go away – it will increase.

As far as a prediction regarding the outcome of June 18, we dare not express one – we will just have to wait and see.

There could still be a magician out there with a rabbit in his top hat to surprise us.