Pressure is mounting on Iceland’s Minister of Trade, Gylfi Magnusson, to resign over allegations he deliberately misled parliament a year ago.
Magnusson is accused of deliberately hiding material from parliament and the public concerning the discussion on foreign currency indexed car loans when questioned on the matter last summer. Such loans have since been declared illegal by the Supreme Court, meaning a huge bill for the banks, RUV reports.
Magnusson is an unelected government minister drafted in to his post as a respected economist and trusted public figure. He has been a popular appointment overall; but public opinion has swung away from him over this issue.
MPs from The Movement say they will be forced to apply for a vote of no confidence against him when parliament opens again in September if Magnusson fails to resign by himself.
Anyone able to explain exactly what the problem is? Of course, as the court had not ruled, the illegality of the loans was not definitively known, but presumably legal advice could have guessed which way the courts would jump. Is the argument that Magnusson had access to this advice and did not pass it onto the Althingi, even when specifically questioned?
Iceland Review (caveat, primary source MBL):
http://icelandreview.com/icelandreview/daily_news/?cat_id=16539&ew_0_a_id=366410
I agree with Bromley, unless he explicitly misled anyone his silence is to his credit.
First point: the legal assumption is that everyone knows the law, ignorance is no excuse in a court of law. So for these MPs from The Movement to admit that they are ignorant of their own laws is an amazing admission. In fact, if law makers such as these don´t know their own legal code they should themselves resign!
Second point: it is usual for ministers and MPs to remain silent once a law is passed. They are not the agents responsible for enforcing the law nor for judgements – those powers belong to the police and courts (or in the case of civil law to plaintiffs). And as Bromley points out how can an individual guess at what a judge is going to decide. If a court case is being heard a minister cannot make any pronouncements on the law – it is prejudicial. In the UK a minister will avoid making any statement about the application of a statute.
To make a wider point – this complaint by these MPs is typical of the confused ideas Icelanders have about the separation of powers. In commercial areas Icelanders have no idea about the difference between a chair of a board of directors and a CEO. (Think about the old Kaupthing Laurel and Hardy duo – could you tell which one was doing which job?) The same is true of Icelandic universities – the rektors act at different levels and thereby subvert normal decision-making processes and also ensure they remain unaccountable. Icelanders always claim that they are expressing freedom of speech when they say whatever they want to say but the reality is that when a person achieves a certain position of power they are constrained by their official role from saying or doing certain things (think about “conflicts of interest” or “priviledged information”).
The issue regarding Gylfi Magnusson has various different angles on it, but basically it boils down to this:
Shortly after the first blog posts unearthed the issue in April 2009, there was a discussion in the parliament about the legality of foreign-indexed loans. Gylfi gave a response to a specific query from one of the opposition MP’s about the legality, but worded the answer in such a way, that he mentioned foreign-currency loans instead (which are legal). Now the question has become, whether he was deliberately trying to mislead the parliament or just didn’t understand the difference (at the time, not many people were clear on the distinction).
There is also the issue of who exactly received and read the original legal-opinion paper from the CBI lawyer (which stated that these loans were almost certainly illegal). Originally, Gylfi tried to say that only a junior lawyer in the Trade ministry received it. But later he had to backpedal on this, and admit he had actually known about the paper.
The underlying factor here is that this is a one big mess, involving potentially billions of Euros in additional losses for the banks, and subsequently the government along with the claimants of the old banks. People are looking for someone specific to blame, and are coming up short. That is why Gylfi, which is not affiliated with any of the political parties and certainly made some mistakes, presents an easy target.
I dont see how Gylfi did anything wrong, he said foreign currency loans are legal, and that is true, he never said anything about loans in ISK indexed to foreign currency, so he never lied and did not take sides for or against in this matter.
There will be elections held in the near future, the four party (independence-progressive-leftgreen-socialdeocrats) is planing to rewrite the constitution, this will start in the next few weeks and will be rushed as much as possible, the objective is to remove the presidents right to refuse to sign laws and increase the power of the government, so we can expect some conflict later this year.
The four-party is fully run and owned by the elite, its is like a bridge between the world of gods and humans.
it is used to transports debt and misery from the world of gods and our savings and freedom in the opposite direction.