Oslo, Norway – A left-leaning alliance that wants to spend more of Norway’s oil wealth on the nation’s welfare system appeared headed to an election victory over the center-right government late Monday, according to preliminary returns.
With 90 percent of the votes counted, official results showed the Labor-led opposition bloc would have a majority of 88 seats in the 169-seat Parliament.
Labor leader Jens Stoltenberg campaigned on a pledge to spend more of Norway’s oil money on welfare, while Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik’s center- right coalition advocated lower taxes at a time of unprecedented prosperity. Labor opposed cutting taxes.
In a speech at Labor Party headquarters in Oslo, Stoltenberg stopped short of declaring final victory while votes were still being counted.
“In this campaign we had two goals: a strong election for Labor and a chance to form a majority government. The one goal has been reached; the other is within reach,” said Stoltenberg, a 46-year-old former prime minister.
A leader in Bondevik’s Christian Democratic Party, Dagfinn Hoeybraaten, said the returns suggest “this result was worse than we expected.”
Bondevik’s three-party coalition government presided over four years of unprecedented prosperity in the Nordic country of 4.6 million people, and the nation’s wealth has been boosted by a windfall from record-high oil prices.
The country, which has a $192 billion fund where it invests surplus oil revenue, is the world’s third-largest oil exporter after Saudi Arabia and Russia. Debate has raged over how to use the oil income.
European Union membership, which Norwegian voters rejected in 1972 and 1994, has not been an issue. Surveys earlier this year showed Norwegians were warming to joining the union, but opposition returned after French and Dutch voters rejected the EU constitution earlier this year.
Oslo voter Kari Murberg Martinsen, 42, said she supports the Red-Green alliance because “I am concerned about children and education and think we owe the elderly decent treatment.”
Bondevik’s minority government consists of the Conservatives, Christian Democrats and Liberals. Labor, long Norway’s dominant party, hopes to oust the government and for the first time formed a three- way bloc with the agrarian Center Party and the Socialist Left.
