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Norway local elections campaign off to low-key start after attacks
Aug 13, 2011, 12:37 GMT
Oslo - Campaigning began in Norway on Saturday for next month's local elections in the shadow of twin attacks that claimed 77 lives.
In several cities including the capital Oslo as well as Stavanger and Sandnes in the west of the country, parties opened campaigning with joint public events, after earlier agreeing to put campaigning on hold in the wake of the attacks.
'We have waited for the campaign start with mixed feelings after the July 22 events, but today it felt good,' Siv Jensen, leader of the opposition Progress Party, said in Sandnes, news agency NTB reported.
Education and care for the elderly were likely to be key themes in the elections, she predicted.
In Oslo, Labour Party city council candidate Libe Rieber-Mohn said the campaign would be 'different,' citing how that attacks had hit her party and its youth wing.
'But I ask the other parties not to treat us with kid gloves,' she said in remarks outside parliament.
Oslo mayor Fabian Stang of the Conservative Party said 'we will not put a lid on the debate, but conduct it in a manner that strengthens democracy.'
'It will be a special campaign,' Kristin Halvorsen, leader of the Socialist Left Party told NTB in Tromso, northern Norway. 'Above all it will be about tone, and I don't think there will be too many harsh words.'
Halvorsen's party is junior partner in Stoltenberg's red-green coalition. Polls suggest a strong showing for the Labour Party, partly attributed to sympathy vote.
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