Many Icelanders voted, 64%, as had not happened in a presidential election for 28 years, and, surprisingly, they awarded Halla Tómasdóttir, the candidate who, during the electoral campaign, had highlighted his extraneousness to party politics, insisting on the need to focus on issues such as the effects of social media on the mental health of young people, the development of tourism and the role of artificial intelligence.
Yesterday the 55-year-old entrepreneur won the all-female race for the presidency of Iceland, overturning the predictions of the day before. They went to her 34.3% of the votes while the former environmentalist prime minister Katrin Jakobsdottir, favored in the polls, obtained only 25.2%. Third, at 15.5%, is the current director of the state energy agency and professor at Harvard, Halla Hrund Logadóttir.
This is the second time that a woman holds the role of head of state in the country after Vigdis Finnbogadóttir, in office from 1980 to 1996. In recent years there have also been two prime ministers: Johanna Sigurdardóttir he led the government from 2009 to 2013, after that the global financial crisis devastated the Icelandic economy, while Katrin Jakobsdóttir she became prime minister in 2017, leading a broad coalition that ended it to the cycle of crisis that had triggered three elections in four years.
Jakobsdóttir, who left office in April to run for office, had recently gained great popularity for how he handled the volcanic eruptions that have occurred on the Reykjanes peninsula since December. But, evidently, the crisis that the Left Green Movement is experiencing, the party of which the former prime minister is the leader, counted in the ballot box, in addition to the fact that in Iceland, a country of only 380 thousand inhabitants, the president is considered a figure above politics, which acts as guarantor of the constitution and national unity, even if it has the power to veto legislation and call referendums. Yesterday morning Jakobsdóttir congratulated her opponent: “I know she will be a good president,” Ruv said on national television.
Tomasdóttir, who will take office on August 1st, succeeds the very popular Gudni Jóhannesson, in office since 2016 and re-elected in 2020 with 92% of the votes, who had, however, decided not to run again. The new head of state became famous during the financial crisis of 2008-2011when Audur Capital, the company she co-founded, was one of the few to survive the economic storm. The entrepreneur is currently on leave as CEO of B Team, a non-profit organization, founded by British billionaire Richard Branson, that works to foster growth and the spread of solidarity in the economic and productive world.
An approach that Tomasdóttir made his own during the electoral campaign, promising to implement it the island a model for sustainable solutions and ecological, as well as supporting equality for all and a social contract based on justice, peace and inclusion. An ambitious program but Iceland is already used to records: for 14 years it has been the best country in the world for gender equality according to the World Economic Forum.
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