Høyre leader Erna Solberg and her former Foreign Minister Ine Eriksen Søreide are now trying to tell us that favours among friends are not widespread in the Norwegian power elite.
They stubbornly claim that they are extremely concerned with following the regulations and being open about connections. These are statements that send a chill down the spine of anyone who has followed Norwegian politics in recent years.
It appears as an insult to voters’ intelligence when Erna Solberg speaks about the importance of registering interests and being open. This comes from the woman who was Prime Minister for eight years while her husband Sindre Finnes carried out thousands of share trades that made her ineligible in a number of cases. Where was this enormous interest in the regulations when she did not ask a single control question about her husband’s activities behind the scenes?
– On the contrary, I experience that people are very concerned with following the regulations, registering and being open about connections and interests. There is no end to it, says former Prime Minister and long-time Høyre leader Erna Solberg to NTB.
The truth is that Solberg has shown a frightening lack of control and judgement when it comes to eligibility. That she now steps forward and says that favours among friends are not common in Norway falls on its own absurdity. What we see is an elite that protects each other and defines the rules according to their own convenience.
Ine Eriksen Søreide follows up with statements that are equally detached from reality. She now tries to downplay the friendship with corruption-charged Mona Juul and blames the press for defining them as close friends. It is a strange claim, given that Søreide declared herself ineligible in relation to Juul already in 2017, precisely because of this friendship.
The hypocrisy reaches new heights when we know that Søreide borrowed Juul and Terje Rød-Larsen’s luxury flat on Frogner when she celebrated her own 40th birthday. She denies that this was a favour among friends, because no one lost money on it. It testifies to a total lack of understanding of how power and relationships work. To have access to an exclusive flat free of charge from one of Norway’s most powerful diplomatic couples is the very definition of a favour among friends.
– It is not I who have called us close friends. It is a designation the press has had, says Søreide to NTB.
Even Finance Minister Jens Stoltenberg (Ap), who was then NATO Secretary General, and diplomat wife Ingrid Schulerud borrowed Juul and Rød-Larsen’s flat for periods in 2016 and 2017, Stoltenberg has said to TV 2. In those periods the couple borrowed the flat without paying rent for it.
It gets even worse when we look at the handling of the reports against Rød-Larsen’s think tank IPI. Søreide was ineligible in relation to Rød-Larsen’s wife, Mona Juul, but still believed she could handle cases concerning the husband Rød-Larsen. The report that young women were being exploited was forwarded to the Office of the Auditor General without the Ministry of Foreign Affairs going into the matter. Solberg defends this by saying that we are not a banana republic.
It is precisely such attitudes that create contempt for politicians. We see a pattern where the top of Norwegian politics and bureaucracy flow into each other. Jens Stoltenberg borrowed the same flat. Børge Brende had extensive contact with Epstein. Crown Princess Mette-Marit met the offender repeatedly.
– I understand that many think it looks like an elite club. It makes me very angry. It damages trust in the political system, and it damages trust in Norway, said Søreide earlier in the week.
When Solberg and Søreide now stand shoulder to shoulder and deny that there exists a subculture with favours among friends, they only confirm that they are part of the problem. They do not see the beam in their own eye. They associate with the same people and attend the same dinners and borrow each other’s flats. For them this is completely normal. For the rest of us it looks like a closed club where membership provides exemption from ordinary morality and associated consequences.
It is time for Solberg and Søreide to stop prettifying the truth. The facts show that they have been part of a system where friendship and positions have given advantages that ordinary people can only dream of.
Denying it now appears not only as naive, but as a deliberate attempt to obscure reality, or to put it plainly in good Norwegian: to lie straight to the voters’ faces.