OSLO: Norway’s right-wing government could resign this week if the justice minister loses a no-confidence vote after she triggered outrage among survivors of a 2011 gun massacre, media reported Sunday.
In a Facebook post on March 9, Sylvi Listhaug, a member of the populist and anti-immigration Progress Party (FrP), had accused the opposition Labour Party of considering “the rights of terrorists (to be) more important than the security of the nation”.
The post, which contained a photo showing Al-Shabab militants, sparked uproar because Labour members had been targeted in 2011 in the worst attack on Norwegian soil since the end of WWII.
On July 22 that year, right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik, who once was a member of the FrP, killed 77 people in twin attacks: one targeting then Labour prime minister Jens Stoltenberg’s office in Oslo and another against a Labour youth camp on the island of Utoya.
Parliament is likely to go ahead with the no-confidence vote in Listhaug on Tuesday.
Any vote could put Norway’s minority administration in a bind because its centrists, who have always been critical of Listhaug, would be forced to pick a side.
Much may rest on the Christian Democratic Party — which is not part of the government but largely supports its motions despite frequent disputes with Listhaug.
