Syrian women run for Norwegian Parliament
QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – Syrian women have run in the parliamentary elections held on September 13 in Norway.
The candidacy of Syrian women comes in an effort to participate in political life and bring change in one of the most important Scandinavian countries.
Nour Habous, who hails from the city of Homs, ran for the leftist Socialist Party (SV). Nour said in her election campaign: “I want a just society and a bright future.”
“I am running for the left-wing Socialist Party (SV) for a fair school system based on student encouragement,” she said in her election campaign.
The Socialist Party, on whose list Habous was nominated, is a democratic socialist party and has about 9,000 members, and its current leader is Audun Lisbakken, who was elected in March 2012.
After being one of the smallest parties in Parliament, it became Norway’s fourth largest political party for the first time in the 2001 parliamentary elections, and remained so until 2013.
33-year-old Nawar Salman, who ran for the Rødt party, was born in Syria and is of Palestinian origin.
Salman lived in the Bode region in northern Norway for 13 years, where she was a deputy in the local council of Bode municipality, but she moved some time ago to Sarpsborg.
Salman, a mother of two, worked as a translator in addition to her work in the refugee office in the municipality of Bode and as an assistant pharmacist, and now she is completing her higher education at Østfold University.
She said in her election campaign that she is running for elections to work on a policy of responsible immigration policy towards refugees.
“I will support the Palestinians’ struggle for freedom and I will push the Norwegian municipalities to boycott goods coming from the areas occupied by Israel,” she added.
Salman will focus her campaign on the school environment and raising children in a multicultural society,” she said.
She will also seek, according to her electoral program, to ensure good integration for those who will be resettled in Norway, in addition to creating job opportunities for job seekers from vulnerable groups in society.
She pointed out that the party is in solidarity with the refugees in general and with the Syrian refugees in particular, and seeks to give them more rights.
She added that she met with party members at the beginning of her arrival in Norway, “They were supportive of us and we were electing them for their support of the Palestine cause.”
“They asked me to run and join the party in 2018, and I could not refuse that, especially since I agree with most of their ideas,” she said.
The Red Party, whose Nawar ran for, is a far-left political party, which is more left than the leftist Socialist Party. The party was founded in March 2007 through the merger of the Communist Workers Party and the Red Electoral Alliance, the current leader of the party is Bjornard Moxness, and the Reds adopt communism as the ultimate goal of their program.
In the previous elections, which were held in Haji on September 11, 2017, the conservative Erna Solberg retained her position as Prime Minister after four years in power, and her presidency was moreover supported by the Progress Party, the Liberals and the Christian Democrats, who secured 88 seats out of 169 in the Parliament.
The opposition, headed by Jonas Gahr Store and his Workers’ Party, won eighty-one seats. Other opposition parties include the Center Party, the Socialist Left, the Greens and the Red Party.
On November 2, 2018, the Christian Democrats voted in a party convention to join Solberg’s government, and on January 16, 2019, Solberg’s Conservatives struck a deal with the Christian Democrats, the first time since 1985 that Norway has a majority government representing right-wing parties in parliament.
On January 20 /2020, the Progress Party decided to withdraw from the government due to Solberg’s decision to return a woman linked to the Islamic State (ISIS) and her children to Norway.
Despite this, Solberg said that she and her party would continue to lead the minority government, and the other parties in the coalition (the Liberal Party and the Christian Democrats) announced that they would continue to serve in it.
According to the Norwegian Constitution, parliamentary elections must be held every four years and the Norwegian Parliament may not be dissolved before the expiry of this four-year parliamentary term, making in practice early elections impossible.