Popular personality and convinced feminist, Katrin Jakobsdottir was reappointed Sunday Prime Minister in Iceland, where this unifying figure with an honest image was able to restore political stability after a decade of crisis.
Despite the sharp decline of her Left-Green party in the September elections, the parties in the ruling coalition have agreed that this 45-year-old former journalist remains in the post she has held since 2017.
A sign that it remains the point of equilibrium of the unprecedented left-right alliance forged four years ago with the Independence (conservative) and Progress (center-right) parties, which had made people cringe in his camp.
“I know I have been criticized for it, but when I look back, I think this government has done a good job, that it has really shown what is possible in politics”, she defended. in a recent interview with AFP.
His image of integrity appeals far beyond his party: Icelanders voted nearly 60% of his retention at the head of government according to a poll last month, even though his party only collected 12.6% votes.
Former Minister of Education from 2009 to 2013, she was able to keep it simple and gain confidence away from scandals, analysts say.
“Katrín Jakobsdóttir is a very skillful politician who has always had a consensual rather than confrontational style,” says Ólafur Hardarson, professor of political science.
This is only the second time since the 2008 financial crisis and its many political upheavals that an Icelandic government has reached the end of its four-year mandate.
However, at the cost of significant concessions on key issues such as migration policy or the environment.
In particular, he had to give up creating a national park in the center of the country in order to protect one of the island’s greatest natural treasures, following the refusal of his two allies to pass the legislation.
“Its weakness is not to be firmer on the issues which were at the heart of the movement of the Greens of the Left”, regrets the former member of the party Rósa Björk Brynjólfsdóttir, who has joined the Social Democrats.
Football and literature
Coming from a family of academics and parliamentarians, Katrín Jakobsdóttir is the second woman to hold the post of head of government in Iceland.
His environmental consciousness was awakened at the turn of the 2000s with the controversial project to build a hydroelectric dam in eastern Iceland.
“I would not say that I was the most radical activist in the city, but yes I started my political participation with demonstrations,” she told American media The Nation.
In 2002, she joined the youth of the Left-Green Movement before becoming vice-president of the party the following year and president since 2013.
Member of Parliament for 14 years, this athlete with a slim figure, brown hair and blue eyes, is the youngest of four siblings. She is also a football fanatic and a staunch supporter of Liverpool FC since her earliest childhood.
The atmosphere is sometimes electric in her apartment in a residential area in central Reykjavík where she lives with her husband and her three boys, all supporters of rival Manchester United.
“I did not raise the children well enough” she joked on a radio show earlier in the year, blaming her husband who spent more time with them because of his commitments which monopolize him. .
In a country at the forefront of sexual equality, it has placed the cause of women in its priorities, in particular by extending parental leave.
Her friends highlight her comedic side – “with her sense of humor and her funny side, she can lighten up the atmosphere,” says Rósa Björk Brynjólfsdóttir, who studied with her.
Holder of a bachelor’s degree in Icelandic and French literature and a master’s degree in Icelandic literature, Katrín Jakobsdóttir is a great fan of fiction and thrillers, finding refuge in reading, a pleasure she grants herself almost daily.
“It’s like therapy at the end of the day,” she confesses.
She revealed last year that she was working with a local author to write her first detective novel.