| Novice new mother challenges Iceland president’s fifth term bid |
REYKJAVIK Icelanders began voting on Saturday to elect a new president, with a 37-year-old mother with a newborn and no political experience challenging Olafur Ragnar Grimsson as he seeks a fifth straight term.
Some 236,000 people are eligible to vote, with opinion polls in the final days of the campaign suggesting the 69-year-old Grimsson was headed for a comfortable victory.
Thora Arnorsdottir, a respected 37-year-old journalist with no political affiliation who interrupted her campaign briefly in May to give birth to her third child, has called for a change after Grimsson’s 16 years in power.
She has vowed, if elected, to return the presidency to its largely ceremonial role, after Grimsson’s unusually political, and at times controversial, approach.
“I think we have all felt a strong need for a change in this country,” she said recently, describing herself as a consensus-builder.
Polling booths opened at 9am (0900 GMT) and were to close at 10pm (2200 GMT), and the first results were expected about an hour later.
Arnorsdottir, a striking blonde with piercing blue eyes, is seen as a fresh face at a time when many Icelanders clamour for a new breed of politicians to clean out the ranks following the country’s devastating economic crash in 2008.
She decided to run after reading an official report on the crash and found that, especially when it came to “ethics and our political system, ... nothing had really changed.”
Grimsson, a socialist, says his political savvy is needed as Iceland, which is recovering rapidly from its crash and already returned to growth, tackles thorny EU membership talks and an October referendum on a new constitution.
Grimsson is, like a majority of Icelanders, opposed to EU membership for fear the North Atlantic nation will lose its sovereignty.
Agencies
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