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EDITOR IN CHIEF- ABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

Norway PM hopes to beat history in re-election bid

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OSLO: Erna Solberg seeks to accomplish something no Conservative Norwegian prime minister has managed for more than three decades: winning a second term.


If Norwegians are sufficiently happy with Solberg’s last four years in power, they will re-elect her on September 11; if not she will lose to Labour Party leader Jonas Gahr Stoere. Opinion polls show the race is too close to call.


Solberg hopes to emulate a European centre-right leader with an enviable track record of winning: Angela Merkel, herself seeking a fourth term as Germany’s chancellor.


“She is absolutely the most important politician in Europe,” Solberg said after taking office in 2013 as she prepared for her first foreign trip as prime minister, to Berlin.


Portraying herself as a steady figure who steered western Europe’s top oil and gas producer through a two-year slump in energy prices, Solberg has warned voters her defeat would mean a “red-green chaos” of socialists and environmentalists bent on raising taxes.


Once known as “Iron Erna” for her tough stance on immigration, Solberg softened her image and broadened her appeal with a 2011 book emphasising people’s needs over the Conservative Party’s traditional focus on fiscal prudence.


Conservatives hope to capitalise on an easy-going personality that has made Solberg popular beyond her party, as seen in a September 6 poll where 46.3 per cent believed her best suited to be prime minister, against Stoere’s 39.1 per cent.


“There is an enormous focus on her as a person, which has given the party a real boost during the election campaign,” said Associate Professor Tore Bang at BI Norwegian Business School, an expert in public relations and political communication.


“The hype around her is atypical for a leader of the Conservative Party. She is seen as a much more folksy politician and has a much broader appeal than Gahr Stoere.”


Born on February 24, 1961, in her late teens Solberg was diagnosed with dyslexia.


Graduating in political science she was elected to parliament aged 28, becoming deputy party leader in 2002 before taking the top job in 2004.


She is Norway’s second female prime minister after Labour’s Gro Harlem Brundtland, who led three governments in the 80s and early 90s and became known as “the mother of the nation”.


— Reuters


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