Iceland Elects Lesbian PM To Full Term

After a snap election, Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir's party has won an estimated 35 seats in the 63 member Parliament to claim a full four-year term as the first openly gay person elected to head a country.

The New York Times reports:

It would also confirm a remarkable turnaround in the political fortunes of Johanna Sigurdardottir, the 66-year-old caretaker prime minister, who is the first woman to lead Iceland’s government. Only months ago, before January’s turmoil, she was readying herself for retirement after 30 years in politics and was widely seen as too feisty, and even too left wing, to rise beyond a series of midlevel coalition cabinet appointments.

Ms. Sigurdardottir is notable, too, for being the first openly declared lesbian to lead a government in the modern world, though her sexual orientation was never a significant election issue. What Icelanders say they like about her, as much as anything, is the way in which she embodies everything the New Vikings did not: a quiet, steady personality uncomfortable with the public spotlight, who chose to stay away earlier this month from a NATO summit meeting in Europe, where she would have met President Obama and other Western leaders for the first time.

In Iceland, the storyline of the election has closely followed the growing partnership at the head of the government between Ms. Sigurdardottir, a former flight attendant, and Steingrimur Sigfusson, the 53-year-old former truck driver and geologist who leads the Left-Greens. He, too, is a combative character, though as much at ease with the hurly burly of politics as the shy Ms. Sigurdardottir is not.

MadProfessah first reported this story in January when Sigurdardottir was named as a caretaker Prime Minister and made history as the first lesbian head of state of a modern nation. It is amazing that she has made history again winning election to lead her nation of 300,000 people.