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New Greenland govt after faith healer row

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  • 17-01-2003 7:04pm
    #1
    Victor
    Registered Users Posts: 78,404 ✭✭✭✭


    I know I'm probably breaking the rules of the board here, but this is just too funny. Can you imagine a government falling because of a "faith healer row" (not even a "faith healer scandal"). :)

    Greenland has a population of 56,376. http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/gl.html
    New Greenland govt after faith healer row
    From:Reuters
    Friday, 17th January, 2003
    By Anna Peltola

    COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Greenland's social democratic Siumut party has formed a new coalition with liberals after a faith-healing row toppled its short-lived government with nationalist leftwingers, officials say.

    Experts said on Friday they expected little change in the Danish territory's ties with Washington, which wants to upgrade a radar base to make it part of its planned missile defence shield.

    The Greenland home-rule office in Denmark said the new government, formed overnight and headed by Prime Minister Hans Enoksen, the Siumut leader, will have a majority in parliament.

    Siumut is the mainstay of politics on the Arctic island and has been in power since home rule was granted in 1979.

    It will now rule with the liberal Atassut party instead of the pro-independence IA, or Inuit Ataqatigiit (brotherhood), with whom it had formed a coalition in December after elections that broke up last week.

    It has tried out both parties before, ruling with the IA after 1999 elections but later switching to Atassut, a coalition whose collapse in October triggered the early elections.

    The IA is vocally opposed to the U.S. plan to upgrade a radar at the northwestern Thule base for its missile shield while Atassut has taken a softer stance.

    "I don't think it will make a great difference. Atassut has historically been more positive on U.S. bases, but they too have been asking for renegotiation of the (military base agreements)," said one Danish political analyst.

    The Siumut-IA agenda included plans for greater independence from NATO member Denmark, the vast ice-covered island's former colonial power which maintains responsibility for Greenland's foreign, security and defence policy.

    Atassut also pursues a more moderate line on independence than the IA, which has called for a referendum on it in 2005.

    IA-Siumut disagreements reached boiling point when a civil servant used an healer to rid government offices of evil spirits, which many found embarrassing.

    Washington is awaiting replies from Copenhagen and Nuuk, the capital of Greenland, to its request to modernise the ballistic missile early warning radar at Thule. Danish Foreign Minister Per-Stig Moeller has said he expects to reply by the summer.

    Many Greenlanders have demanded the renegotiation of a 1951 deal which allowed the United States to set up the base. That agreement was made by Copenhagen and Washington without consulting the locals, most of whom are indigenous Inuits.

    The base provides 400-500 jobs in the region and generates tax income of 100 million Danish crowns each year -- some five percent of Greenland's public revenues excluding an annual grant from Copenhagen.


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