Sindri Bloggar

demonstrations at Bessastaðir
(presidents residence) picture from mbl.is

Our president just refused to sign the Parliament's Icesave bill in it's current form. It's the agreement with the terms for how we're paying back the British and Dutch savers from when the banks went bankrupt 2007 and were taken over by the government. One fourth of the voting population had signed a petition urging him to do this so that a national referendum could be held. The bill was passed by the Parliament a few days ago with just 33 votes against 30.

It's difficult to say what will happen to Iceland now. The small population is definitely not very keen on paying back these huge amounts at a high interest rate to the Dutch and British savers and feel the former banks' debts are the result of a small group of very irresponsible people that was never charged with their actions. If we were to sign up to these debts but find ourselves unable to pay will we loose for example access to our nature resources to the Brits or the Dutch?
People are not as interested in joining the EU as just after the bank collapse either. Many feel that it was a bad decision of the government to take over the banks in the first place. We lost all your money but hey we manged to save all your debts as the bank staff explained the situation to a customer on the New Year's Eve comedy show. Many people feel loosing all their money letting the banks collapse would have been a much better option than the huge cutbacks that follows paying the icesave debts.