Greenland’s center-right, pro-business, opposition Demokraatit Party surprisingly won the most votes with 29.5% during March 11 parliamentary elections—a totally unexpected result as the island went to the polls amidst Donald Trump’s threats to take Greenland “one way or another.”
The Demokraatit Party was followed by the Naleraq Party (Breakpoint), which won 25%. This centrist party wants a quick referendum for independence in contrast to the winning party, which prefers a slow approach. Naleraq wants to immediately kick off “divorce” proceedings from Copenhagen and have closer defense dealings with Washington.
More people voted than usual, 70%, approximately 28,000 people, out of 40,500 eligible.
Greenland’s governments have traditionally been formed by one or both of the more left-oriented Inuit Ataqatigiit (United Inuit) and Siumut (Forward) parties. IA calls itself democratic socialist, and Siumut is the common social democratic party. IA has been the ruling party since 2021 when it won an overwhelming 37% of the vote, now down to 21%. Siumut had 30% and fell to 14.7%. The two had 21 of parliament’s 31 representatives.
Prime Minister Múte B. Egede’s governing IA Party had been widely expected to win the current contest, followed by its coalition partner Siumut. A January poll suggested that IA would gain 31%, and 22% for Siumut.
“We don’t want to be Danes. We don’t want to be Americans. We want to be Greenlanders,” PM Egede told reporters.
Siumut’s most prominent candidate had been Aki-Matilda Hoeegh-Dam, the youngest person at 20 to gain a seat in parliament. However, she left the party just days before the election and joined Naleraq. She garnered the third-largest number of votes, 2.954, doubling the number of its leader Pele Broberg.
Demokraatit Chairman Nielsen received the highest number, 4,850, and IA’s Egede received the second most with 3,276.
Nielsen is mainly known as Greenland’s badminton champion. His party is lukewarm about independence from Denmark’s “Kingdom.” The Demokraatits are allied with Denmark’s Liberal Alliance (libertarians). He was surprised by the large vote for him and his party.
“We had not expected that the election would have this outcome. We are very happy,” he said.
Denmark’s broadcasting corporation DR reported that Nielsen said his party would reach out to all others to negotiate Greenland’s future political course. It may take days or weeks before a new government is formed. It appears that Nielsen will bring either IA or Naleraq into a two-party coalition government, which he would lead.
No political party, either in Greenland or Denmark, or the mass media had foreseen these radical results. This election shows that most voters think differently from mainstream pundits. It shows that most Inuits are more concerned with local matters—more and better social services/schools/ housing, fishing quotas, less bureaucracy, and closer decision-making processes.
Pundits consider this election to be Greenland’s most historical and the strongest protest to contemporary politics. Both traditional ruling parties, IA and Siumut, seem to be too closely identified with bureaucratic practices as are their counterparts in Denmark. Socialist People’s Party (SF) is like IA, while Siumuts are closest to Social Democrats. Both Danish parties are shells of their origins—flip-flopping, bureaucratic, and all out for every U.S. war. They even want to increase military aid to Ukraine to counter Trump’s wish to end the war.
IA started in 1978 as a home rule “People’s Community” party with an “anti-imperialist” basis, favoring a socialist economy. Small Danish leftist parties have criticized IA for having moved toward a capitalist and bureaucratic inert party. Since 1999, IA has distanced itself from its original principle of common ownership.
For example, it allowed the most lucrative part of the retail chain KNI and Landstrykkeriet companies to be privatized. The party swallowed a hastily implemented municipal reform without consulting the people. Mayors accused its plan of being “too technocratic.”
“IA has not managed to involve the population and contribute to changing the population’s political awareness. It has changed its visionary mass party principle to become a pragmatic voting machine with focus on elections and parliamentary work,” wrote the communist website.
Path to Independence
The island of 56,000 inhabitants, 85% indigenous, has been on a path toward independence since at least 2009 when Denmark’s parliament passed a law granting Greenlanders the right to decide their future as part of the “kingdom” or become independent.
“What approach to independence will win the day will ultimately depend on if Demokraatit decides to form a coalition government, and if so, with which party,” said Dwayne Menezes, managing director of the Artic Think Tank, Polar Research and Policy Initiative.”
The night before the election, BBC and Danish DR showed the Arctic as a critical geo-political-military area for a “new” Greenland. Since President Donald Trump’s threat to take Greenland under his wing—stating that he needed Greenland, and the Panama Canal, for “economic security, for national security, and to protect the Free World”—Denmark agreed to have more military presence and surveillance of the whole area, including where Russia and China have territory and alleged “expansion interests.”
Ironically, Denmark authorized more money ($1.23 billion) and more military presence in Greenland just days before Trump made his threat. Since then, Denmark’s centrist coalition government declared that it will raise its “defense” budget three times over a handful of years. It will also build a military base of its own on Greenland.
The U.S. has had a military base in the far northwest of the island since World War II. Now called Pituffik Space Base—so named after the Inuit hunting village from where the U.S. kicked them out—it was formerly known as Thule Air Base. It was from this base that a B-52 flew when four atomic weapons fell into the sea in a 1968 aircraft accident. Hundreds of Danish clean-up workers and nearby Greenland residents became sick, and many died from radiation.
Neither the Yankees nor the Social Democrat PM H. C. Hansen told their citizens that the Yankees had nuclear weapons on Greenland, nor will the Yankees tell any countrymen where they place their weaponry.
Last year, Denmark signed the Defense Cooperation Agreement, which allows the U.S. to occupy territory with troops and weapons at Danish military bases soon. Denmark is one of only a few NATO countries that, until now, has never allowed foreign powers to station their military on its territory.
Some analysts say the U.S. president’s aggressive stance has actually given the Arctic territory more bargaining power with Denmark, and kicked the independence movement into high gear.
Among the hot topics Greenland’s new parliament will face—in addition to the Trump issue of ownership, staying in the Danish “kingdom,” or independence—is the central and divisive issue of exploiting its rich, nearly untapped mining deposits. Greenland passed a law in 2023 allowing foreign investors to explore mineral deposits, which could make independence more sustainable given that half its economy depends on Danish government subsidies.
Other matters are: diversifying Greenland’s economy, building infrastructure and improving health care, as well as shaping the country’s strategy for countering the U.S.’s “America First” agenda.
Mass media openly repeated Trump’s speech to the U.S. Congress a week before the election: “We need Greenland for national security. One way or the other we’re gonna get it,” he said, prompting applause and laughter from a number of politicians, including Vice President J. D. Vance.
However, in Greenland’s capital of Nuuk, his words struck a nerve with politicians who were quick to condemn them. “We deserve to be treated with respect and I don’t think the American president has done that lately since he took office,” Prime Minister Egede said.
“We don’t want to be Americans. No, we don’t want to be Danes. We want to be Greenlanders, and we want our own independence in the future,” is what the new government leader Nielsen told Britain’s Sky News. “And we want to build our own country by ourselves.”
The election campaign was also dominated by a new documentary called Greenland’s White Gold, which was produced by DR. The documentary centers on a cryolite mine in south Greenland that operated from 1854 until 1987. Cryolite is used in the production of aluminum, and the documentary estimates that the mine generated 400 billion kroner—or $83 billion—in total revenue for the Danish operator and the government in Copenhagen.
The documentary caused outrage in Greenland, where many view it as confirmation of Denmark’s exploitation. “The Danish often claim that Greenland is just an expense, when we have contributed a great deal to their well-being and prosperity,” said PM Egede. He added that Greenland should free itself from “the shackles of colonialism.”
DR faced criticism about the documentary from some experts, who called the figures misleading because they failed to take into account operating costs, which would have benefited Greenland. The broadcaster pulled the documentary, which only caused more anger in Greenland. “Dear Denmark,” Steen Lynge, a Demokraatit MP, said in a social media post about DR. “I want my money back.”
Not all Greenlanders, however, want to break free from Denmark.
The Atassut Party is conservative, liberal capitalism-oriented, long in favor of staying within the Danish “kingdom.” As with the Demokraatits, it stands for greater social services. It kept its 7% (7.4%) of the vote and remains the fifth party in parliament. Two smaller parties did not reach the limit.
Aqqalu Jerimiassen heads the Atassut Party and was formerly minister of business and energy. He was a service economist in tourism and has been a co-owner of a tourist company. “We might be ready someday, but not today, not tomorrow,” says Jerimiassen.
He acknowledged the wrongs committed against native Greenlanders and said the Danes must accept responsibility. Greenlanders have chafed under Copenhagen’s authority for years. That resentment only worsened in recent months after new revelations about forced sterilization of Greenlandic teenage girls in the 1960s, and abuses at residential schools. “Every colonizer has made mistakes, but we cannot live in the past,” Jerimiassen said.
Atassut supports universal health care, free education, and other forms of welfare. “While some here very much would like to be U.S. citizens and would like to follow the American dream, most would not be in favor of joining the United States and losing universal access to these services,” Jerimiassen says.
Jørgen Boassen, a Greenlander nicknamed “Trump’s son,” received semi-celebrity status in the MAGA universe as Greenland’s biggest Trump supporter and was among those who welcomed Donald Trump, Jr., when he visited Nuuk. But even Boassen does not want Greenland to be taken over by the U.S. He wants the U.S. to be Greenland’s “best and closest ally with everything—with defense, mining, oil exploration, trade, everything.” Nevertheless, Boassen wants to maintain the Danish welfare system.
Block Grant-Employment-Social Conditions
Per capita gross domestic product is close to the average for European economies, but the economy is critically dependent upon substantial support from the Danish government. Denmark supplies $511 million, about half the revenues of the self-rule government, which employs 10,307 Greenlanders out of a total of 25,620 who were employed as of 2015. Some 95% of export income is from fishing.
Unemployment is 2.5%, the lowest ever, down from 9.4% a decade ago. Greater employment comes from several large construction projects, including a new airport and greater tourism.
Life expectancy, however, is only 71.8 years while, in Denmark, it is 81.3 years.
Alcohol is the single most important public health challenge in Greenland.
About half of the population reported binge drinking at least monthly.
Studies of alcohol-related deaths estimated that, during the period 1968-1983, 10.8% of deaths of adult Greenlandic males and 7.1% of females were alcohol-related. Violent deaths including suicides made up 73.4% of alcohol-related deaths.
In the last 30 years, alcohol consumption has decreased by 30% as of last year, and is now on par with other Nordic countries, which is still high internationally. It would also follow that there are fewer alcohol-related suicides.
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About the Author
Ron Ridenour is a U.S.-born author and journalist, anti-war and civil rights activist since 1961. After joining the U.S. Air Force at 17, he saw the inner workings of U.S. imperialism first hand and resigned. In the 1980s and 1990’s he worked with the Nicaraguan government and on Cuban national media.
He now lives in Denmark and, in addition to writing a dozen books, has served as a special correspondent and freelance investigative journalist for many publications in the U.S. and several Latin American and European countries—among them: The Morning Star, New Statesman, The Guardian (U.S. and England), Playboy, Liberation News Service, Pacific News Service, Coast Magazine, Qui, Skeptic, Seven Days, and Pacifica Radio.
CAM co-founder Philip Agee wrote commentaries to two of his dozen books: Yankee Sandinistas: Interviews with North Americans Living and Working in the New Nicaragua, and Backfire: CIA’s Biggest Burn. See also: The Russian Peace Threat: Pentagon on Alert and Winding Brook Stories at Amazon and Lulu. Other work can be found at ronridenour.com.
Ron can be reached at ronrorama@gmail.com.
