Voters in the Faroe Islands, an autonomous Danish territory like Greenland, will elect their parliament on Thursday after a campaign that largely ignored global tensions in favour of local issues.<\/p>\n
Given the crisis over Greenland and US President Donald Trump’s desire to take over its fellow Atlantic territory, “one would have assumed that the question of statehood and the relationship with Denmark would probably play a larger role, but no,” Heini Skorini, a lecturer at the University of the Faroe Islands, told AFP.<\/p>\n
Located more than 1,100 kilometres (635 miles) from Copenhagen in the north Atlantic , the archipelago’s 18 islands have been autonomous from Denmark since 1948 and obtained extended home rule in 2005.<\/p>\n
Most of its political parties want the territory to become independent but retain close ties to Copenhagen, given the archipelago’s dependency on foreign trade.<\/p>\n
“That does not mean saying goodbye to the Kingdom of Denmark, they want to maintain very close cooperation with Denmark but on an equal footing,” Skorini said.<\/p>\n
Despite this, the independence issue did not prominently feature in the run-up to the vote.<\/p>\n
– Coalition divisions –<\/p>\n
Campaigning began a month ago, when the head of government, Social Democrat Aksel Johannesen, called elections to the Logting, the territory’s parliament, following divisions within the ruling coalition.<\/p>\n
The next day, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen announced parliamentary elections across all of Denmark, forcing the Faroese to hold two ballots in less than 48 hours.<\/p>\n
“This wasn’t planned or coordinated in any way,” Skorini said.<\/p>\n
In the Faroe Islands, the Social Democrats are projected to lose, dropping nearly nine percentage points in opinion polls.<\/p>\n
That said, around 20 percent of the archipelago’s 39,000 voters were still undecided leading up to the vote.<\/p>\n
The outgoing prime minister’s centre-left party looks to win only six of the 33 seats in parliament, behind the Conservatives and the centre-right Union Party.<\/p>\n
At the end of their term, the Social Democrats and their coalition partners, the Republican Party and the Liberals, were unable to agree on nurses’ salaries and a gigantic infrastructure project to build the archipelago’s fifth undersea tunnel.<\/p>\n
The issues have dominated the election campaign — along with the question of immigration, which is essential to address the territory’s labour shortages, Skorini argued.<\/p>\n
The growing reliance on foreign labour is changing the demographics of an archipelago that until recently was very homogeneous, creating both opportunities and concerns about the cultural cohesion of the small, rather conservative society.<\/p>\n
In December, the territory voted to liberalise its abortion laws, which were some of the strictest in Europe.<\/p>\n
The changes are only due to enter into force on June 1.<\/p>\n
But even with a right-wing win, the law is unlikely to be overturned, Skorini said.<\/p>\n
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