Thousands Gather In Weekly Iceland Protest Over Financial Crisis
Some 4,500 people braved the winter chill to reiterate their calls for new elections to be held, brandishing posters reading "New Iceland Now" and "Out with the Garbage," according to an AFP journalist at the scene.
A public opinion poll published earlier this week indicated that a majority of Icelanders want new elections to be held before 2011 when the current government's mandate ends.
Just over 70% of Icelanders surveyed said they wanted new elections before 2011, while 29% said they didn't want to bring the vote forward, the poll in the daily Frettabladid showed.
Iceland's Prime Minister Geir Haarde has said it would be "a disaster" to call early elections now, as the country struggles to pull itself out of its worst ever crisis.
On Monday, the government survived by a wide margin a no-confidence vote put forward by the opposition.
"We can't bring about political uncertainty at a time like this," Haarde said this week.
The country of just 320,000 people saw its once-booming financial sector collapse under the weight of the worldwide credit crunch, forcing the government to take control of three major banks in early October as the island's currency nose-dived.
The crisis has led to massive lay-offs, as inflation hit a record high of 17.1% in November. The country also has the highest interest rates in Europe, at 18%.
The cost of the banking crisis could run as high as 85% of gross domestic product, or 1.1 trillion kronur ($9.4 billion), according to the government.
Reykjavik recently secured a bailout of almost five billion dollars from the International Monetary Fund and the neighboring Nordic countries.
Saturday's protest was calmer than the previous week's gathering, when demonstrators broke into a local police station to demand the release of a protester arrested a day earlier.
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 29, 2008 12:39 ET (17:39 GMT)
Publié le 29 novembre 2008 Copyright © 2008 Dowjones
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