Progress (Faroe Islands)

History

Founded on 9 March 2011 by Poul Michelsen and others as a breakaway from the People's Party, the party won two seats in the October 2011 election to the 33-seat Løgting.[2] Its two MPs in this first election were Poul Michelsen and Janus Rein. However, almost a year after the election, on 6 October 2012, Janus Rein left the party and became a non political member of the Faroese Parliament.[3] He didn't give any clear reason to why he left the party, just that there were some disagreements between him and Poul Michelsen. On the following day, the Faroese website aktuelt.fo, which was run by the newspaper Sosialurin at that time, brought an article saying that the two MP's disagreed on whether Janus Rein should be a candidate for the elections for the city council of Tórshavn or not. The elections for the city councils of the Faroe Islands was to be held on 13 November 2012. Poul Michelsen wanted Janus Rein to be a candidate, but Rein refused and finally left the party.[4] A few days later 25 members of Framsókn wrote an open letter to Janus Rein with an appeal for him to leave his seat in the parliament and give it to the next person on the list. The next person was Hanna Jensen, who took active part in establishing the party from the beginning.[5] Rein didn't give up his seat in the Løgting, he continued as a non-political member, which means that Framsókn after 6 October 2012 had only one MP. Rein later joined the People's Party.

In the Løgting election in 2015 Progress got 7.0% and two seats after polling much higher during the campaign. They subsequently formed a coalition government with Republic and the Social Democrats in which Poul Michelsen became Minister of Business and Foreign Affairs. On 17 September the party was joined by Annika Olsen, a former Deputy Prime Minister who was a member of People's Party until she left it nine days after the parliamentary election, on 9 September 2015. However, after a great personal pressure, she chose to leave Framsókn again after only 3 days, on 20 September 2015 and took leave from the Løgting for a month.[6] After that Framsókn continued to have two members of the Løgting.

Current members of the Løgting
  • Ruth Vang
  • Bjarni Kárason Petersen

Electoral Performance
Election Votes % Seats +/– Position Government
2011 1,933 6.3
2 / 33
 New 5th Opposition
2015 2,241 7.0
2 / 33
 0 5th Coalition
2019 1,559 4.6
2 / 33
 0 6th Opposition

Footnotes
  1. Nordsieck, Wolfram (2019). "Faroes/Denmark". Parties and Elections in Europe. Retrieved 2 September 2019.
  2. "Historisk sejr til lagmanden på Færøerne". Dagbladet Information (in Danish). 30 October 2011. Retrieved 20 May 2012.
  3. Eystportal.fo Janus Rein farin úr Framsókn
  4. Aktuelt.fo Archived 2013-02-13 at Archive.today Janus Rein vildi ikki stilla upp til býráðið
  5. Kringvarp.fo Vilja hava tingsessin frá Janusi Rein (in Faroese)
  6. Egholm, Sverri (20 September 2015). "Annika Olsen tikið seg úr Framsókn" (in Faroese). portal.fo. Archived from the original on 22 September 2015. Retrieved 18 October 2015.
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